Circles of Rust
by ro-lal
Summary: Tony Stark died in Afghanistan in 2008, a prisoner of war in an explosion that took out the whole cell. A year later, Steve Rogers comes out of the ice and is assigned by Director Fury to find out who the hell is flying a metal suit around Eurasia, blowing up US weapon cells and bring him to SHIELD. (Wow, not sure about the genres, but there's some action and blood and stuff.)
1. Chapter 1

He figures there's enough blood and tissue to make the scene look realistic enough. Supposing someone comes looking, anyways, and bothers to see if that red splatter over there used to be him. There's plenty of it, enough that the general assumption is that one doesn't make it out alive after losing chunks of bone and muscle this big. It's especially convincing if there's a big explosion that conveniently tears everyone else to pieces, too.

If they don't go looking for pieces of Tony Stark in blown up terrorist cells then they'll have to assume he died somewhere in Buttfuck Nowhere Important, Afghanistan. That's okay with him. He doesn't want to go back to being billionaire weapons designer Tony Stark. He doesn't want to deal with the public backlash of returning from the dead. He certainly doesn't want to see Pepper's face if he comes back broken, wrecked as he is now. Tony Stark died with Ho Yinsen, died with the good man who was killed for Stark's plan to build a suit of armor instead of the missiles Raza wanted. Now Tony, just Tony, is alone, has been alone for two weeks, and they've kept up with the beatings and the torture just because they can and somehow he's still expected to build their missiles and Tony is just so done. So tired.

He wants to be free.

There's banging on the solid metal doors of his portion of the cave, and as he struggles with the chest piece attachment while the programming finishes up he glances to the right and sees the razor Yinsen used in its little cup. For a moment he pauses, thinks of how the other man shaved every day without fail, how even if his hands were raw or bruised or bloody they never shook, not once. Thinks of how he inspired Tony and kept him going. Thinks of the expression on his face when he died.

He steels himself, and pinches the skin on his wrist pushing the final bracket of the chest piece into place. The screen of the nineties' box monitor flashes green and the suit powers on in acknowledgement. It's convienient, he feels, that the moment the suit releases the chain attachments is the moment the door explodes. Serves as a nice dramatic beginning to his escape.

They obviously weren't expecting a robotic suit of armor, no matter how primitive or patchwork it may be. Woefully unprepared, these people, for the genius eccentricity of Tony Stark. He almost finds it amusing that they're trying to shoot him down with handguns and rifles. Can you shoot down a missile with an M9? The answer is no. So, logically, can you shoot down a suit made of missile parts with an M9? The answer is, again, no.

Can you shoot the armor enough to bruise the body inside the armor? Unfortunately, yes. It's a very good thing Tony has a high threshold for pain now. One of the greatest gifts the Ten Rings gave him, backhanded as it was. The bullets don't do any damage, not really, so he has a good time walking through the mess of terrorists - there's the guy who shoved his head in the water the first time, and he was particularly vicious so Tony makes sure his skull meets a wall - and moving them out of his way. There really isn't enough room in this cave-hallway (cave-way? cave hall?) anyways, so he makes room for himself and damn everyone else. This is his time for revenge.

It doesn't take long to find Yinsen's operating room. Off the table and relatively clear-headed six weeks later, he sees how crude it is and fights the cringe on the doctor's behalf. He wastes a precious minute scanning the area and sees blood smeared on the wall, on the corner of the table. Tony knows for a fact that he was the last person operated on since he arrived and feels sick. There's more of it on the ground, too.

The parts that used to fill the hole in his chest are in a jar, in the back of a freezer. He's not sure why they have a freezer in this room until he finds organs with names, genders, and ages on their jars. He stares at his own and remembers that they tried to make him eat its contents, once. em _Eat your heart, Stark. You have no need of it._ /em Though the jar is opaque now, covered with ice crystals, he still sees the raw flesh, the white shine of his sternum obscured by meat. His muscle, his skin. An involuntary shudder works its way through him and he swallows, hard. The blast will defrost it. It will be enough.

The rest of the cell finally realizes that all the screaming and gun shooting can't have come solely from their only prisoner, and find him by piling into the cramped operating room. Tony wraps one protective arm around the fragile jar, gentle through the metal suit, and fights his way out.

Raza is there, at the entrance to the cave. Tony's never actually been this far without a blindfold or a concussion, so it's a bit embarrassing to get turned around in the caves he's lived in for three months. But he imagines Yinsen directing the way, taking smooth, perfectly measures steps with that sense of casualness that only he had mastered. He walks beside Tony even as men fall around them, broken and bloody as Tony himself when he first arrived. However, unlike him, they'll die here. He'll make them all burn.

"Stark," the man sneers, as though he's still got a head on the man in the metal suit. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Uh, escaping." Tony's words are sure, cocky even, spoken in impeccable Dari kudos to the dead doctor to his right. "What do you think you're doing?"

"You will not escape," Raza hisses, poisonous even in the face of death. Because, yes, he's gonna die too. For Yinsen.

"He's stalling." His conscience's voice is now smooth, soft, faintly accented. "You should end this before it gets out of hand."

"Right," he mumbles to himself, and that's it. Out come the flamethrowers and the metal fists and really, none of these assholes never stood a chance, did they? Raza goes down in a spray of blood and a strangled cry. Tony watches with nothing in his heart. He steal's his captor's knife and pries open the jar with it, smears it around in all the thawing blood and flesh, drops it. Tips over the jar into his hand, and thanks the stars that he can't feel his parts even as the sickening squelching sounds make his stomach turn. He arranges it artfully, cleverly, along a wall in such a way that when he blows the roof off it'll look like it was a person once. And yeah, it was. Once. It was Tony Stark. But soon, there won't be a Tony Stark anymore. He locates the tie he wore to this godforsaken country, drops it over by the mess so that it'll get singed just enough to be realistic. Poor billionaire, killed in an explosion after months of captivity. A real American hero, he sneers. Or a tragic villain. He supposes he'll have to watch the news from a different country and find out.

He stomps out, sets the place on fire. There are a few of his older model grenades in the piles and he drops a few through the entrances, getting out moments before they blow. It's all really fast and painless work, almost not worth the amount of time he spent planning it. The only thing that makes it worth that time is, he gets to watch them all die. He stands from a safe distance and eyes the explosion with a critical eye, saying nothing. There's a lot of silence, leaving his ears ringing after all the crackling and screaming.

"Stark." If Tony turns, he can almost see the man there just on the edge of his vision, sleeves rolled up and glasses reflecting the sunlight. "Tony. Don't waste your life." And he disappears.

Hearing the words again, real or not, is like a slap in the face. He reveled in being Tony Stark too long after he physically let go. He shakes his head at his own stupidity, turns, and trudges away.

He should have thought of a cooling unit to put in the suit, jesus christ.


	2. Chapter 2

**Circles of rust 2**

Tony hadn't thought the plan through this far. His main focus was his destruction, his death, and theirs. Now that he's gone through with that, he's getting intimately familiar with the sheer monotony of the desert.

God.

The thick padding he's got on underneath his suit is protecting him from chafing, but not from the heat. He's being cooked inside the suit, his own personalized oven made for him. He's dizzy, nauseous, blind in the brightness, and so, so hot. It almost doesn't even feel like heat, just his skin crawling, bubbling up and rolling under his protective layers. He would take off the suit, but that would just leave more Starktech weaponry lying around, wouldn't it? That counts, right?

He spends hours under the sun, in hell. Hours. Days. Months. Whole lifetimes reaching as far before him as he can see, starting at his feet. How many times has he died now? How many times has he forced himself to his feet, groaning and aching under a thousand protesting pounds of metal?

His chest aches, burns. He had to turn off most of the suit so it wouldn't drain the arc reactor, but that just makes it harder to keep going. Harder to move at all. The moment he did it he'd fallen to his knees, bracing himself with his arms so he wouldn't outright collapse. Now, eons later, he's still struggling with the same temptation. To fall down, and not get back up. He's so, so tired. So done. It was all too much effort, and now he's fucked. No food, little water, but that just makes his gut churn. He wants to see an ocean before he dies. Wonders, offhandedly, if that's ever going to happen. If he'll ever get to see if the suit flies. If he'll ever see anyone he knows again, despite what he did to Tony Stark in the cave. Tony's a murderer.

He starts shedding pieces of the suit.

Tony starts carefully with the arms, peeling back the heat-pliant metal with one gauntlet-free hand and tearing the circuitry apart, wire by wire. Burns his fingertips with the sparking protests, sears his skin on the outer layers. First blisters, then raw wounds as he works slowly to shred every ounce of evidence. Every piece of the wiring is meticulously torn to shreds, so no one, nobody, could ever hope to repair it. Tiny threads of metal lie in the dying man's wake, because that's what he's doing, is dying. Slowly but surely giving into the haze that is his brain, even as he takes the suit apart, removes all the layers, and while that serves as a small relief he puts all the large casing on the protective cloth and drags it behind him. The dunes are too hard to climb, pulling as much weight as he is, and even without the suit he wouldn't make it. Every mile or so, he figures, he drops a piece of suit into a hole he digs with his now unfeeling feet. There's something bad about that, he realizes with a vague distant feeling. Something about damaged nerve endings or something, he's not sure. He was never a biologist.

Night is falling when Tony buries the helmet. The sand is still hot, enough that when he sits by a large rock, a rare sight amongst all the sand, he's still a little warm when the temperature suddenly drops to freezing levels. He's glad he saved some of the protective under layer, even if it's only helping a little. He covers the reactor very well, because despite it being in his body, it gets cold very quickly, and a ball of ice in the middle of his chest is not the best feeling. Lesson learned, experience had, never again. Except now he's out in the middle of the desert and oh, the cold actually reaches its nasty little fingers through his meager clothing and freezes it anyway. His heartrate slows as his core temperature drops and oh, it's suddenly so hard to move. He doesn't want to move, except to huddle in a ball and sleep, maybe. Sleep sounds good. It might distract from his shivering and maybe, just maybe, he won't feel the cold.

He wakes up to someone's eyes on him. His elbow comes up and slams into the person's abdomen, earning a choked gasp, and he sits up quickly. God, they found him. Some of them made it out alive and they found him and oh god, he doesn't want to go back -

A soft voice speaks in Dari, asks if he would like a drink. If he's alright. If he knows why he's in the middle of the desert with a hunk of freezing metal in his chest. The ground shudders beneath him as he processes all this and oh. A car, a truck of some sort, with a caravan-type roof over their heads, and they're speaking to him again, telling him he's no longer in Afghanistan but rather in Pakistan, and they brought him there because they thought he might be running away. From what, they don't know, and they don't ask.

All his hurts come flying at him full-force. He thinks carefully, considers their questions as he sips the proffered water. This is it. He got lucky. He can start over now, offer up a backstory, the frantic babbling of a lost man with no life left to him. But. But what if?

Tony tells them, in a hoarse, broken voice, that he doesn't know.


	3. Chapter 3

To be honest, I wasn't expecting to make it this far. I thought I'd write the first chapter, maybe the second, and with the lack of feedback give up and move on because confidence? What's that? But your favourites and follows encouraged me and here we are, at the end of Tony Stark. How does that make you feel? Reviews only encourage me further, and if I see names out there then I know exactly who I want to please.

This is totally not me begging for reviews.

**8**

He wakes to a wall of pain, a sledgehammer to the chest. His eyes snap open and for a moment, the world is too white, but as he adjusts, all other sensory input registers in a way he absolutely does not appreciate. He hears frantic curses in Dari, sees people moving around him, yet is unable to move. His fingers twitch spasmodically, curling in and out, scrabbling at the rough cloth beneath him as if managing a grip on something might lessen the pain, ease the tightness. His mind brings him back to a time, the one time, worse than any other moment except for Yinsen's death, when he dropped his car battery.

The weight of the battery had pulled the cords off with a sickening sensation that all his insides were going to come spilling out of the hole in his chest. No, the electromagnet was still there, unbearably heavy in its solidity, but that didn't stop the sudden chill, the shortness of breath. Psychosomatic as it was, he felt the prickle of tiny pieces of shrapnel crawling through his veins, mere millimeters from his heart. In an hour or so, it wouldn't have been his imagination. He found himself clawing at the air beneath him, searching out the battery, but when he found it his hands were shaking too violently to do anything. The panic, the fear, was overwhelming, but the sudden shock of agony dwarfed everything else. At first they studied him, shook him, watched him twitching and gasping and writhing on the floor, clutching the battery like the lifeline it was, and it was too long before someone came with Yinsen, who made quick work of the connections so he could breathe again. It wasn't an instant fix-it, no, it was a gradual decrease in pressure as the electromagnet powered on, a slow abating of the sharp prickling, a long sigh of relief. For an hour afterwards he felt dizzy and weak. At least they left him alone for the rest of the day.

The same sensations apply now, except there's no battery to cling to, no doctor to reattach the wires, just a hand hovering over his chest with the glowing blue that keeps his heart going but it's not where it belongs, it's out of its socket, displaced, missing, and the panic is threatening to swallow him whole.

The voices get louder as he starts to choke on air and there are hands everywhere, but the haze is dropping, fading everything out and he can't see, knows who they are but doesn't, wants them to let go but can't make them. The blue light moves erratically, moving closer and then farther, as though it doesn't know what to do and Toy thinks it looks rather like a star, yet is too undefined to really see and too bright to be natural. Of course it's not natural, it's made by man. An artificial heart, and like any heart, if you tear it out then the owner becomes cold - dead or otherwise. Tony... Tony is about to be both.

And then they're shoving it at him, pushing the light back into its socket, into his chest, and the rough grind hurts over the beginnings of his cardiac arrest but it's a different hurt, a real one that he feels, is entirely aware of. The click is audible over the cacophony of the voices, his blood beating in his ears. The ragged intake of air sounds painful, is painful, and the voices stop. For an astonishingly clear moment he sees his caretakers hovering over him, yet doesn't mind when they suddenly disappear, held hostage and hidden by the wave of black crashing in.

**8**

So as it turns out, the people who took Tony in are also terrorists. They never tell him to his face, and they never give any indication, but it's not really Tony's business if they aren't the Ten Rings, is it? They don't bother with Starktech either, which is an added bonus that makes him warm up to them a little more. They don't inquire into the extent of his amnesia except out of curiosity. They don't ask about his nightmares They're a kind family, friendly and willing to assist almost everyone they see. Rare people in any part of the world.

They have no idea how to apologize enough for the whole arc reactor mess.

Their youngest son, Shajid, is an unfortunately over curious thirteen year old who's been asking about the reactor for a few days now. Apparently he just got too curious that evening and started messing with it through the hole in Tony's shirt. When it came out, he tugged and... Tony's intimately familiar with the rest of the story. He assures them that it's alright, but that hey please not touch it anymore, for obvious reasons and they accept this.

He still asks to be dropped off at the next major city, despite how comfortable he's become around the family of seven. There's no such thing as personal space in their caravan but it's a homey invasion. Tony sleeps on a sack of rice with a bunch of garlic cloves in a bag next to his head, and somehow Jenin ends up draped over his right leg every night. He helps clean the dishes after the adults cook (his first attempts at their gruel had ended so poorly he wasn't allowed to try again) and keeps the kids entertained by trying to come up with a name for him that fits. He "discovers" that he can speak four languages (not including English, which he deliberately does not use), a fact that fascinates the whole family endlessly when he swears in all of them after stubbing his big toe. They are happy to teach him Urdu, the more common language in Pakistan, in exchange for funny phrases in Italian.

But it's time to move on. While seemingly saddened, they promised to help him find his way and agreed to leave him in Lahore, the capital of the Punjab province and second largest city in the country. That's good and all, but the fact that it's near the border to India is what catches his attention.

It would be so easy to hop over and start anew. Will be. He's so doing it.

There are tearful goodbyes and Tony's heart aches in a way it hasn't since... Since before he could remember. Somehow, over the last three weeks of laughing and learning and hiding amongst the rice bags, he's become a part of their family.

They decide on Mitra Kahn, a rather whimsical and unorthodox name meaning "friend". Tony thinks it sounds rather feminine, but Afghan culture is confusing, and they assure him that, while Mitra is an unusual name, nobody would generally ask for the first half. Kahn, it seems, is a sort of honorific that they drop after the first few days of using his name. He finds he rather likes it, though it will have to go once he gets into India.

The rice sack they give him has some dried food, cooked rice (ha ha) and a considerable amount of money. He closes the bag, and sighs, just a person amongst the heaving crowds of people. It's a beautiful city, but he sees some sort of authority every where he looks, and that's dangerous for a man like him. He swallows, the full reality of his situation stealing his air.

Yinsen stands to his right. "Do it, Tony. Find your way. You're smart, aren't you?"


	4. Chapter 4

Dances and sings, reviews, reviews. I love you guys~ So here's a chapter I typed up real quick this morning.

**8**

The crash will end it all, he thinks. The explosion in the bottom of the ocean will destroy what needs to be ruined. He carefully does not think of what he's doing personally, instead almost joking with the people on the other end of the connection. Acting as though nothing is wrong, setting dates he won't be able to keep. Serum or not, there's no way he could survive a plane crash of this size.

The bombs behind him are a heavy presence he is ever aware of, stifling and crawling forward into the little bubble he's trying to create. He grips the wheel enough to dent the metal, thinks that at one point in his life he would barely have been able to hold something this size. Thinks that, maybe the little guy was Steve Rogers, and he's not so little anymore. If he were little, he wouldn't be able to do this. He still has that same courage, or so he thinks, that got him to this point. But he's not famous for being Steve, is he? People know Captain America.

When he dies, will he ever be Steve again?

The shock of hitting the water is enough to silence his conversation with Peggy, enough to stare at as he hits with enough force to crumple the already damaged front of the plane. It's as if he world is working in slow motion, and he has plenty of time to watch as the water doesn't enter immediately through the hole, but rises around the sides and the pressure is so immense the steel collapses and maybe it's compressing his lungs, too. In the books, the protagonist has a split second to draw a deep enough breath to stay alive when he finds a way to escape. He wasted that second watching his end begin.

**8**

He wakes to the crippling sensation of a thousand needles crawling up and down his body, stabbing and smooth pricking in equal parts. The sensation fades, and then doubles up and he has to bite his burning tongue to hold back the cry of pain. He feels small again, like the did that one time he lost the key to his house and had to wait outside for his mother because Bucky was visiting family across the city, and it had been so very cold. It was hours before she arrived, and by then he was past shivering and into the aching stillness. She had gasped, tutted, lifted him to his unsteady feet and pushed him inside. He'd sat there, slowly warming even though the inside wasn't much better than the outside, and after the initial heat it started to hurt.

Rather like when you lose the circulation in a limb, and it's cold until you rub it back to life and then it burns. His face, his arms, his toes, his ears, his everything is wet and on fire. Against his better judgement he opens his eyes to see. And finds himself wrong. There is no cold, no ice, no water, no shattering shards of airplane cutting into his numbing skin. He is not small, he is not Steve.

The bombs, though, he still feels their presence. A solid thing, much like when someone is watching you and you aren't expecting it and you don't know where they are watching you from and it's a particular sort of fear, isn't it?

He's in a room. Small, simply decorated in familiar colors and design but there is something wrong. Even from this tiny bed he can see out a window, through the sheer curtains, and he knows buildings were never this tall. The polished radio is recounting a baseball game and it sounds vaguely familiar.

It hits him and he starts with the shock of it. Time has passed. He's been gone. Here's his chance to know if he's the Captain or Steve. (He knows the answer already.)

Why is he still alive?

Or maybe, the cosmic cube. Maybe it took him, too, just like it took Schmidt and he just didn't know it, and it dropped him in a different reality. Or...

No.

A nurse walks in, wearing a design of clothing he's unfamiliar with. It serves as an instant register for all the other things he doesn't recognize: the smell of the paint, the feel of his own clothes and sheets, the sounds from outside... The baseball game on the radio that he's already been to.

Her voice has an unfamiliar accent and she doesn't deflect rather well, does she? He makes his escape rather quickly, finds himself in some sort of facility and savagely thinks, I knew it. Can't trick me, you bastards.

As he sprints he does wonder what they wanted with him, and when he sees the outside world, thinks, what were they playing at.

It's a mess of color and light and sound and people, busy in a way he's never seen. And the thing is? It's America. He's in the US and the world has moved on to new and great things.

The prickling returns sharply, cutting off his air, and he feels eyes trained on him.

"Captain Rogers," a black man says.

He knew it.


	5. Chapter 5

**So basically weekend updates are going to be in the morning, weekday updates in the afternoon/evening. Your reviews are crack, your favs and follows are candy, and it's an extremely unhealthy addiction but I can't bring myself to mind. I'll waste away and die in a corner without them.**

I swear real plot will happen soon.

**8**

They treat him like cracked glass, fragile and unstable. There are whole floors of SHIELD's New York base decked out in forties themes, only the ones he travels most. It's not as much a comfort as they might think. Actually it's rather symbolic, because he walks out of some high tech room and into a hallway, and the familiar design is nice, but right when he starts to relax the hallway ends and oh, the walls are brushed metal, the floors false marble tiles and he's in the future, right, an obsolete icon in a spandex suit, holed up in a government building because they don't know what to do with him.

Really it does more harm than good.

They issue him an apartment in Brooklyn, as if that'll provide some sort of closure, but it won't and he knows it, he just doesn't argue. There's no point. He's being shredded psychologically twice a week by some upstart in a suit who claims to know Steve's brain better than Steve himself. They're wrong. It's all wrong. What in his life is not wrong?

It's the worst kind of war, the one where you battle yourself and you used to have friends, have teammates, have soldiers to help get through and get done but they aren't here now. They've all aged and gone, some recently, some sixty-six years ago because now, now it's 2010 and what is he supposed to do about that? Keep fighting, he supposes, but he wonders how it would be worth it, if he should tolerate everyone's shit and try to move on, only to realize nothing's there to move on to, or maybe realize that now, punch SHIELD in the face with that small fact, and find a way to end it all now because even if he did try, did pass his psych evals, he wouldn't be who he was, who he wants to go back to being. He wants to be Steve, or Rogers at the very least but no, he's Captain America or The Captain.

It's times like this that he wishes he'd never become a super soldier; he enlisted to fight the war, not tear down castles full of magic and alien technology and fight people with red skulls instead of faces and end up being a popsicle for sixty-some-odd years, only for the first lucky scavenger to strike gold and melt him, just so they can use him again. He wants to be Private Rogers again, and damn everyone else.

His war was more than sixty years ago, and the Captain can't even count how many worldwide skirmishes and acts of terrorism and other wars that the US has been involved in. It's horrific, it's disgusting, it's entirely unnecessary. And now all the once-noble nations are just trying to intimidate each other, waving around bombs and threats to get what they want, and it's honestly just kids in a sandbox with a bunch of rocks, all fighting over who has the biggest stick but hiding their hands behind their backs because no one wants the others to see and really, the thing is that none of them have a stick at all. And the US talks the loudest, argues the most, is that bossy kid who wants to play teacher when everyone else wants to be the teacher so they can boss everyone around but the US takes control anyways, yelling and screaming and taking everyone's toys when they make her mad.

America's a bitch.

He takes trips, sometimes.

Not outside the city, no; SHIELD won't allow him that because of the potential shock, as though sticking his unconscious body in the middle of the busiest city on the continent and waiting for him to wake up and panic was a very good idea on their part. He makes the short trip to his apartment, walking because traffic, wow, that wasn't even a thing, really, where he comes from.

When he comes from.

He wanders down to coffee shops and electronics stores, buying himself a laptop and maybe denting his more than a half-century's backpay, a little. He goes to museums, up the statue of liberty, looking for old bookstores, old parks, for any bit of familiarity and finding none. He sits outside a cafe to sketch, eyeballing the skyscraper before him and thinking, it should be more futuristic. The middle of Manhattan should be bright and bold, punching the sky with the top of an impossibly tall tower that's not actually there. He uses the napkin he gets every time he visits and draws a new skyscraper design on it, holds it up to the short one before him, and is unsatisfied. It's been two months since he woke, he's been here a dozen times, and is never happy.

He had hoped for flying cars, at least.

When he steps inside his apartment this time, he senses something off. People have been here, probably from SHIELD because they like to come in and out like they own it, which he supposes they do but they issued this apartment to him, much like a pair of boots, and you don't go running around in each other's boots when someone's using them, do you?

Well, he's not sure about today, but back in his time, the answer was no. People are all kinds of backwards, nowadays.

He finds the difference on his desk: a set of files, all shiny and in color and when he looks a little closer he sees names, Jaques and Peggy and James Buchanan Barnes -

No. He snatches up the files, consciously loosening his grip so he doesn't crush them, and stomps back out the door, pausing to lock it behind him. He and Director Fury are going to have words.


	6. Chapter 6

**Circles of Rust 6**

God, I am so glad you guys didn't mention the whole America rant. I actually have absolutely no idea where it came from, and when I told my let-me-vent-ideas-at-you-until-something-works-whi le-she-asks-questions-about-plot-holes girl she got this face and asked to read it, whereupon she said I should let you know that these entirely unAmerican thoughts are not my own views and all that... yknow, move to Hawaii, be an American Citizen, do not bash your nation's way of handling things. It's really not how I feel, and like I said I've got no idea where it came from so let me apologize for possibly offending someone or... Something.

Let me tell you honestly, I don't know what I'm writing for this fic until I've written it. Literally all I've got planned is "Steve, Fury, mission, Tony, somewhere cool, Mr Red, secretly Iron Man, and how does that work?" which I doubt was much of a spoiler for you, considering the summary, but if it was then sorry.

Whew... This is the longest thing I've ever written without any real dialogue, and now the idea of two characters is, is intimidating. Jesus christ. What a nightmare. So that's why this chapter took so long. My most sincere apologies.

I will not mention the happy dance I did on the bus upon reading your comments.

**8**

Let it be known that Captain America doesn't get angry. He gets serious, he gets stern, he gets disappointed and he gets Serious. Captain America does not march straight into a SHIELD facility and demand Director Fury, still clutching his keys and the files in either hand.

Steve Rogers does, though. Steve Rogers clears rooms upon entry, scatters junior agents and unnerves senior agents with the intensity of his furious stare - carefully not a glare, but angry all the same. Steve Rogers is quickly ushered to an elevator, escorted by agents with their hands stiffly by their sides, directed straight to Fury's office without a moment's hesitation. Steve Rogers holds his tongue with a steady calm, waiting to release his frustration on the only body who can do something about it.

Fury's office is the picture of sleek and high-tech. Grey walls, metal furniture, technology everywhere: cameras in the corners of the room, the AC unit on the wall, the printer and fax machine to the left, the laptop on his desk.

Fury himself watches Steve as he examines the place, with a vaguely disinterested look in his eye. He seems to know when Steve is done because the moment the other man has seen his fill, he indicates a chair and Steve sits.

"I've been expecting you, Capt-" He starts, but Steve cuts him off with a raised hand. Fury raises an eyebrow but complies.

"I'm not here as the Captain, Director," Steve says. "I'm here as Steve Rogers, and I'm here because of these." He drops the files on Fury's desk, afforded a quick glance for confirmation.

Fury, on the other hand, doesn't look at them. Instead, he keeps his gaze trained on Steve's face. "I'm not sure I understand why you're here."

"These," Steve says stiffly, "these are why I'm here."

"And why are these here?"

"I'm returning them."

"Did you read them?"

"I didn't need to."

This gives Fury pause. He seems to consider this, carefully. Steve waits with his hands fisted in his lap, unsure the other man can understand, that any man can understand the well of emotion that rises every time he thinks about his old life, how much he doesn't want to think about it.

"Why didn't you need to?" Fury asks, finally, brow furrowed and examining the profiles of all his dead friends.

"They're dead," Steve states.

"Not all of them."

"I don't need to know that."

"I don't understand your problem here," Fury announces, leaning back in his huge chair and crossing his arms. Steve shrugs, heart sinking just that little bit more. He was right. Nobody gets it.

He takes a deep breath. "I don't want to know about these people or their lives. Their deaths."

Suddenly it sounds very selfish. He worked with these people, befriended them, for years, and when he is forced to move on, what?

He doesn't want to look back.

Fury lets out a breath. "You worked with the Commandos for three years, Rogers." He picks up the files and sifts through them. "You have no questions?"

Steve thinks about it, carefully. "Did any of them have families?"

Fury's eyebrow goes up again. "If you read these, you'd know." He picks through the large folder, selects three. "These boys settled down, one had kids. Still hanging around Brooklyn somewhere."

Steve glances down at the three papers, suppresses a flinch at the names. Good for them, he supposes, but this is why he didn't want to look at them.

Fury picks another paper, out of a smaller file, sets it on top of the other three. "Howard Stark married."

Steve looks up in surprise, fights for control. This will only hurt more later. Stay calm, Rogers. "No kids?" he asks, neutrally.

Fury sighs, looks down at the file in his other hand. "He had one, named him Tony."

"Where is he now?" C'mon, Steve, really? He mentally berates himself, frustrated at his own emotions betraying his reason for coming.

"The thing about Tony Stark is, he was the greatest weapons manufacturer America - anyone," he amends, "has ever seen. And the rest of the world knew it. He was taken in Afghanistan in 2008 and held as a prisoner of war by terrorists until their base blew up. There wasn't enough left to take home."

Steve expects to feel grief, or at least some sort of obligatory "I'm sorry for the loss" awkwardness. Instead the director's words anger him, bringing back all the dark hatred of the world back to the forefront. He desperately needs to hit something, and he'd rather not do it to Director Fury's face. He stands, leaves the files where they are, turns to leave. "Thank you for your understanding."

"Rogers."

He pauses, one hand on the door handle.

"The world still needs Captain America."

"That's a nice sentiment," he snorts before he can stop himself, releasing more of the ugliness inside before he cam stop it.

"It's the truth," Fury says evenly, still seated at his desk. Steve faces him, arms crossed. "You just need someone to prove it to you. You look like you've been cooped up here for too long," he adds, pulling out another file from... from where? This one is black, the color of mission folders, and he slides it over to where Steve had been sitting. "Need to take a break. How does a little vacation sound?"

He heaves a deep breath, turns, and takes the new folder.

**8**

... Guess I better change the summary, huh? Steve turned out to be much different than I'd imagined, initially. Whoops?

Well, next is a good helping of Tony and the feels that (hopefully) follow!


	7. Chapter 7

So I must dedicate a solid 12% of this fic to my dear friend and co-conspirator, Chels. I tried to give her more but she wouldn't take it. She's a beautiful person who pretty much always helps me out with everything, even tolerating my endless bitching about Steve in this fic because GOD, HE IS SO HARD TO WRITE. She helps channel my thought process, because I have so many ideas and then she provides NEW ONES and sometimes I steal her little comments to use in the story, so we can basically consider her my cheerleader, advisor, inspirer, and wow hey she's my Pepper, guys. If you guys could give her a cheer, here or on ffnet (here's her u/1412981/) I'd appreciate it cuz damn, she deserves it. Seriously, without your support and hers, this fic would not be here.

2008

He's starting to forget what English sounds like.

There are plenty of signs and things, people who, as he passes, try to make deals or start conversations in broken, accented English. Some people are fluent, and that's alright but he establishes pretty early on that he doesn't (won't) speak the language. It never sounds right, never feels right to carry a conversation in it, not when he can't remember Happy's voice and is hanging on to the barest thread of Rhodey's.

Yinsen's, he never forgets. Yinsen is with him, all the time. He never speaks in English, anymore. For every new language Tony picks up, Yinsen matches. Sometimes his words are garbled, hesitant, or spoken in a different language instead but he catches on just as quickly as Tony does. It's a relief, he thinks, to have someone around with him all the time. He needs that to ground himself.

Pepper used to be his rock, but now he can't remember the color of her eyes. She used to do everything for him, she was there all the time, and he misses her so much that it's a constant ache on a good day and a debilitating agony on a bad one, rendering him useless as he mourns his loss, and he can't even remember if her eyes are blue or green. Selfish, he thinks, to miss a woman he deliberately turned away from. In order to save himself, no less. To start over, with no regard for anyone who has to deal with the aftermath.

Sudden guilt gnaws his insides. He'd never thought of it like that.

"Don't start that now, Tony," Yinsen warns, arms crossed and leaning against the wall, to his right, always to his right. "It's too late for regrets. You have more important things to worry about."

More important things, such as finding a home and a job and a name, such as leaving those regrets on trodden dust but oh, Nagpur is hardly the India they put in the pictures, is it? No dust roads here, at least not in Sitabuldi Market, the center of the city. He almost thinks of pulling out his cell phone and calling JARVIS, demanding for his AI to pull up any and all information about the land he's walking, can almost hear his friend's voice, too -

But he can't remember, and that's what ruins the scene. He's staring at a modern marketplace, with people and cars and food and goods, and he turns and slips into a back street, just a man with no name and the clothes on his back.

The road on the other side is a lot quieter, with few people and some slow moving cars. It's hot and bright and exposed, and Tony wishes for his sunglasses to protect him. But he doesn't have those, and thanks to the higher beings for his overgrown hair and beard because he honestly looks like a different person except for his eyes, but nobody ever saw his eyes because he never let them.

He feels like this situation has been coming to him for a long time.

He shoves his hands in his grey jacket pockets and slouches down the street, head at an acceptably low angle and staring at the ground as he walks. He's been here a day, using a bit too much of his money to stay in a slightly nicer hotel, and he has yet to learn the language. Marathi, it's called, but he's never heard of it. He assumes it's some sort of dialect, but it'll take a few months of full-time immersion to master (but that won't be hard, will it, because look what he's doing now).

There's a sudden outbreak of what seems to be violent cursing, in Marathi. Tony freezes up on instinct, whips around, sees the smoke. Oh god he's out of time, he steels himself for an explosion, for screams and cries and blood and death, so much death everywhere, and even though he can't feel them dying under his hands it's everywhere, they're dripping, his metal patchwork hands are covered in blood, painted red with it in the dim underground lighting and he can't move, gunshots and bones and Yinsen's face as he dies -

The smoke clears to a view of a man with rolled up sleeves, hands on his hips and glasses half sticking out of his pocket. He runs a hand through his short hair, still muttering curses in Marathi. The smoke is billowing out from the car, thick and black and was that all? Tony finds himself relaxing before he realizes his hands are shaking, and that is just too much, it was a little smoke from a car and the idiot driver, and wow, he hasn't felt a need for coffee since before he got over his caffeine withdrawal and he's about to fuck up his record, seven whole months and not a drop of coffee in sight, but right now it's a thing that he needs, and he needs it now.

Only a couple buildings up, on the opposite side of the street where the idiot paces, Tony spies the picture of a coffee cup, unmistakably Starbucks. Oh, that beautiful, glorious food chain. If he had the assets he'd be blessing that company like no tomorrow, but as it is he's glad and grateful that all he needs is to look across the street before he finds the company he once scorned.

He walks in, is immediately wooed by the smell in a way no woman could do to him, and learns his first word of Marathi. He gives them a few coins and walks out carrying his cup of kavaah, a proud man.

Coffee in his no longer trembling hand, he finds himself meandering back down the street to pass the driver and his car, which is finally done smoking. The man has ceased his cursing but is still muttering and doing a fine amount of pacing, and now he's got dirt on his arms and tools in his hands and oh, Tony is itching to touch. Those tools look shiny and new and better than his cup of Starbucks coffee, which is already half gone and still a godsend.

The man stresses and groans over his car issues while Tony stresses and chugs coffee over his sudden overwhelming need to play with the shiny new toys, not twenty feet away, and fix that poor car before the stranger breaks her. Bad stranger. But he seems to know what to do, leaning in and reaching over to the square box of the -

No, he's grabbing at the tubing. em Oh god, he's grabbing the tubing, christ, no, it's an air circulation problem, you dumb fuck - /em

He doesn't realize he's moved until he's got the man's wrench in hand, berating him fiercely in Urdu with his hands (and wrench) flailing in the air. The man stares at him like he's crazy, which is totally inaccurate because this man, this man was doing it em wrong /em. And Tony physically cannot stand by and watch any longer.

The stranger pits his gold-rimmed glasses back on, presumably to stare properly, and asks, "वहात आर ओउ दोइङ्ग?"

Hell if Tony knows what that means, so he answers in Dari this time, shoving the wrench and his cup of kavaah at him before turning with a huff and adjusting all the stuff this idiot fiddled with. Then he tackles the real problem.

"Tony," Yinsen warns, but Tony ignores him.

It's a simple matter of popping the quick release system, pulling the case out of the lower housing and removing the filter to clean inside the box and dust it out. Since he doesn't have an air hose or a compressor to attach the hose to, he does his best with some cloth and toweling, ripping the old filter gauze out and replacing it with the massive store of it the driver's got in his, honestly impressive, extensive repair kit. It can't even be called a kit, it's so cool.

The whole thing is cleaned and replaced in an hour, and when Tony stretches, the man he'd totally forgotten about presses his now-cold cup of coffee into his hand. Tony, surprised, chugs it and the other guy sighs quietly. He asks a question that, once again, Tony can't make heads or tails of, so he looks up at the sun reflecting off the gold and shrugs, responding absently in French as he rolls the empty cup around in his hands.

Then there's a hand at his shoulder and he jumps, heart stopping, and he smacks the hand away and pushes up to his feet, hands up and ready for a fight and oh but wait, it's just the guy. The guy whose car he'd just torn into, taking apart and polishing and putting back together without asking.

"I tried to warn you," Yinsen mutters. "I always say, do as I would do, but you're Tony S-" He pauses, reconsiders. "When have you ever listened to me?" he says finally, his exasperation dissolved in light of his mistake. Tony shrugs, allowing his tension to drop with his shoulders.

The stranger asks him something a third time and he shakes his head, not even bothering this time. Clearly their communication is a lost clause, so he inclines his head and turns to leave, his fingers still itching even though he's returned the tools.

There's a sharp exclamation from the man and Tony freezes, wow he's been startling too much today, this is a completely new experience that he's not very comfortable, seeing as the only other time he's been surprised like this was way back with the arc reactor incident with the family who found him. The man repeats himself, softer, "एक्ष्चुसे मी," he says, and Tony still does not know what he's saying, but it doesn't sound threatening so he turns with a sigh and waits for him to continue.

He looks excited, packing up his tools and talking at him while pointing to his car, and then back to the tools, and points to Tony's pocket.

Tony was never good at charades.

The stranger sighs, gets in the car, and gestures to the seat next to him. Tony hesitates, really sort of unsure of what to do here, what do you do in a situation like this? In America, if he got in the car with somebody he didn't know he'd be drugged and unconscious before he could put his seatbelt on. Not even funny.

"Not only Americans are capable of that," Yinsen comments dryly, peering into the car from the open passenger seat window. "This car is nice. I always wanted a Lexus, but for obvious reasons," and here he looks amused, "such as my job choice and," now a grimace, "recent events, as recent as a year ago can be, I couldn't get one."

Tony snorts. Right. "Do you have any idea what he's saying?" he asks, quietly, and even though he's on the other side of the car he is heard only by Yinsen.

"I didn't get any college experience in Guesstures," is the response. "I'd say, though, maybe, that he wants you to get in the car. Perhaps he's going to take you somewhere?"

"Oh god, you're another JARVIS," Tony grumbles, then feels terrible.

"Well," Yinsen levels him a look across the hood of the waiting man's car, "what else is on your schedule?"

That gives him pause. Well.

Yinsen smiles, his lenses flashing in the sun. "Get to it, young man."

That earns the man an eyeroll, but he complies. Why the hell not, right?

The inside is cool and comfortable, and the stranger is looking at him like he doesn't know what to think but still drives off, turning a maze of corners and passing a lot of colorful places. They pull to a stop in front of what is, obviously, a mechanic's shop. An auto mechanic's shop.

Oh, it must be his lucky day.

He's led inside, practically vibrating with excitement but somehow keeping a lid on it, and maybe it's the solid warmth of Yinsen's hand on his shoulder. The guy he drove in with calls out, and this huge guy appears from a back room, tall and muscles and tan skin, welding goggles and thick gloves and greasy overalls and Tony may die of want.

They have a rapid discussion, glancing at him and gesturing the car, and he just stands there and waits, still clutching his empty cup with some small part of his brain attempting to will coffee to appear in it, well aware that having just the one cup was a terrible idea, oh god, he's going to have a headache the whole rest of the day. The conversation is showing no signs of stopping, so he goes to find a bin to discard his cup, which at this point is just taunting him.

There's no bin in any obvious places so he wanders off into the real thick of the shop, heavy chains and saws and a solid wall of well-loved tools, and cars supported five feet off the ground to get at the underneath, hopelessly dirty floors and a spill of grease and oil over everything vaguely cloth-like and Tony loves it, loves it so much. He forgets about the cup and instead opts to investigate properly, poring over engines and ducking under hanging tires, having the best time in a way that seems slightly different from when he had a family with the caravan.

Then he sees the tiny little carburetor, half dismantled and sparkly clean, and resolutely doesn't shriek in excitement, but it's a close thing. More of a strangled, nasty sound of desperate need. Fuck the coffee cup, he doesn't even know where it is anymore, his hands need to be in the guts of that, right now.

He surfaces an hour later, after meticulously cleaning every piece and putting it back together. His eyes are aching slightly, because hey, small parts and no magnifying glass, but he's still grinning like an idiot and his hands are still itching for more, so why not find the beauty this belongs to?

Instead, he runs into the big guy and the stranger, who by the way is totally at least two inches shorter than Tony himself so it's a little odd, tech in hand and grease on his face.

Oops.

"One would think you might have a modicum of self-control, Tony," Yinsen sighs, turning away from the other two men and crossing his arms in a very disappointed way. Tony ignores him, because if it mattered that much he would have stepped in.

"I did," Yinsen says, frowning. "You did your best impression of a creature with no ears."

Oh. Alright, then.

The big guy is staring at him. He offers up the carburetor, the man takes it, and he feels slightly disappointed, because he wanted to see it work.

Big guy asks stranger a sharp question, receives a nod in return, and turns back to Tony.

"What'd you do?" he asks, in Urdu. Oh, hey, cool, communication.

"I cleaned it, and put it back together," Tony says, because really that's it, he's pretty sure. Yinsen huffs behind him and Tony does his best impression of a creature with no ears again.

"Mhm," says the big guy, skepticism clear in his voice, and gestures for Tony to follow.

That is exactly how he gets a job in Nagpur, India.

A solid two months pass. Being a mechanic is a well-paying job, and he gets an apartment nearby. The shop is like his security blanket, and he practically lives there rather than his actual home. The big guy, Sarvankar, lets him stay in the shop after hours, no overtime, to mess around with everything as he likes, so long as the place stays secure. Tony is allowed to cannibalize any obsolete parts he wants for his "secret project", and yes, he abuses the privilege, but Sarvankar lets him, so it's okay. The Starbucks a couple streets over knows him well, and his second cup is always something new (his first is coffee so black it could melt the roof off your mouth and he loves it). He's almost fluent with the language now, his boss has been helping him out on that end, and everybody sort of knows him, at least as that guy with the two-layer shirts in this heat, he must be crazy.

Tony is at peace.

He's walking down the street with some froofy frappuccino he enjoys a little too much, it might have to be a check on the have-another list, in one hand and half a car door in the other when it happens. An entourage of cars comes down the street, drawing curious looks from passersby, with a limo in the center and he feels like someone just dumped a bucket of freezing water over the warmth of his new life because that, that's a Stark Industries limo and –

Ah.

That's a Stane Industries limo, and Pepper Potts is getting out to go to the Starbucks he just left. The pain is sharp and sudden, like a whip, like when he was still healing and couldn't move too much or he'd reopen a stitch around the reactor by stretching wrong and it would hurt, so much, not there and then suddenly everything he knew as he tried to breathe through it, waiting for it to go away and it didn't, not for a long time, until Yinsen was able to calm him back down and help.

The man himself is trying to speak to him now as he stands there in the middle of the sidewalk, frozen, staring at Miss Potts as she disappears into the shop. Yinsen's hands are at his shoulders, shaking him, but he doesn't really feel anything until Sarvankar's huge hand slaps him on the back and he drops his frappuccino.

"Acervi?" he asks, looking concerned. Tony turns wide eyes to him and keeps staring, still seeing, unable to believe. "Hey, Acervi. Focus."

Tony blinks and looks down at the mess on the ground, nodding, numb. Raw, but numb.

"Are you alright?" Sarvankar asks intently, hands on his shoulders where Yinsen's were moments ago.

"Yes," he answers, and it comes out as a rasp. His grip on the chunk of car door is painful. "Yes," he says again, clearer this time. "I'm fine."

"You don't look fine," Sarvankar observes, releasing his shoulders and taking the car part from him. "We got a new customer, some idiot with an Audi who doesn't know how to drive. Come down and take a look?"

The helpless snort is a kneejerk reaction. "Fuck," Tony says, following, "foreigners and their damn cars." Giving up on his coffee as a lost cause, he tosses it in a garbage bin in the alley as they pass it.

"Still no clue where you're from?" Sarvankar asks, not quite sympathetic, but perhaps understanding.

"Amnesia's a bitch," Tony replies, sighing.

"I would've thought that, whatever that was back there might mean you'd remembered something."

"I wish."

"Wanna talk about it?"

"Not really."

"Alright."

Tony hides in the office when they get there, agreeing to calm down and come back out in a few minutes. Pepper's profile is burned on the backs of his eyelids, the new Stane Industries logo, the limo. That was his, once. Now he works in an auto shop in India. Neither are horrible lives, really, so he doesn't understand the surge of resentment, directed at whom or what, he doesn't know, and he's floundering trying to figure out where it belongs, so he can push it aside and help the poor moron outside but he can't because the unknown is a terrible thing.

"Tony," Yinsen starts, and Tony rounds on him.

"Why don't you call me Acervi here, too?"

His look is unreadable. "Why don't you call yourself Acervi?" When Tony can't answer, he continues, "Because you're really not. You're still Tony Stark, whether you like it or not, whether he's dead or alive. Be Acervi all you like, but you know who you are."

Ah, so that's where all the resentment goes.

"I'm behind on my project," Ton - Acervi announces. "I gotta go work on it after this idiot with the Audi."

"Give it up, Tony," Yinsen says. "Your ruse isn't fooling me. I know you better than you do."

"You never help," Tony says, and closes the office door behind him.

****8****

**so what the fuck happened here. **

**(guess what the secret project is. GUESS.)**


	8. Chapter 8

YOU WERE ALL WRONG, HAHAHAHAHA.

Except you weren't.

Sometimes I wonder where the everloving fuck this story is going. Like, really. What am I doing here? Does this fic even make sense? Seriously. I think I'm good, got a plot and a Pepper to make it work and then one of you turns this shit around on its head with a good idea and I'm left flailing with a burning need to make it happen. Damn you, you perfect people. I love you all.

Ok how is this over 10k already didn't I start this like last week?

**8**

"I'm not sure," the guy admits with a shrug, casually leaning against the wall. "I mean, SI do their best to keep track, but we're a huge company now, all across the world - that's what we're doing here, after all. Seeing if we can set up camp here, build a tower."

Tony freezes momentarily, overcome by horror for one terrible moment - not long enough for the Stane Industries (and damn, but that stings) employee, aka idiot Audi driver, to notice, but Sarvankar does. Casually as he can, he leans a little further in under the hood and fiddles with something in a vague attempt to make it look like he's working. Honestly he's replaced the piston rings already, so it'll stop burning up the oil - idiot should never have let the level drop that low, everyone knows Audis eat their oil like a six-year-old with candy - and now he's listening in for something good on the new SI, but the man's useless. With a sigh, he leans back and brushes ineffectually at the dirt on the knees of his ratty jeans, dropping the tools and stretching. The foreigner (and when did Tony start considering himself local? He's only been here two months) is still bragging relentlessly and, quite frankly, it's painful to hear.

"Audis are shit," he announces in Marathi, and Sarvankar glances at him and laughs. The SI employee looks vaguely nervous.

"What'd he say?" he demands, and Tony grins.

"Why the hell even did he take one to India, for shit's sake?" he continues. "Does he not care at all? Or is it the company's new policy?"

"It may have been the policy all along," Sarvankar notes with narrowed eyes, suddenly taking on a calculating expression, and Tony realizes his mistake. "Did you fix it?"

"Yeah," he says, rolling his eyes. "Man coulda done it himself if he had enough brains."

"Acervi," Sarvankar warns, and turns back to the customer, resuming their conversation in English. "He says he's fixed it, and it should run fine with - "

"Tell him to get the oil changed every couple weeks!" Tony calls from the back of the shop, where he's retreated from Sarvankar's Stern Gaze.

"With an oil change every two to three weeks," he finishes, as though Tony had never spoken. Tony suppresses a shiver, slightly unnerved at the precise manner in which Sarvankar speaks English. He doesn't make mistakes, having little accent and always using the correct terminology, and it's honestly a little frightening and Tony still doesn't like the sound of the language. None of it is right.

He wastes a moment wondering if Pepper's voice would sound right, but then he can't remember it anyways, so there's no point bothering.

"Two weeks?" The customer's voice just rose a couple decibels, he's sure of it. "But that's -"

"Exactly what must be expected out of this car," Sarvankar finishes, sounding rather serious. The man sighs in assent, and Tony relaxes, picking up a chunk of car part and heading over to the forge. When he sees the orange of the fire, however, his mind moves away from his intentions and onto

em Pepper, Pepper, Pepper /em

He saw her today. She didn't know he was there but he saw her, and she looked tired. He wonders what her role in SI is now, wonders if she got his Malibu home the way he willed it, wonders if JARVIS is still functional, wonders how Rhodey's doing, wonders what they'd say if they knew what he is going to do now. It hurts, like a thousand stab wounds, a deep seated ache, a slow burn to hell, thinking about them, about his old life, and who he is now.

Who is he now?

"Isn't that obvious?" Yinsen stands in the shadows, sleeves rolled up as always, glasses reflecting light. Tony wonders if he took his glasses off, would there be light behind the lenses, too? He misses the man's kind eyes.

"Well, I can see," Yinsen answers his silent question, "but, one way to find out." He reaches up.

"नो!" Tony lunges forward and tries to knock the other man's hand away, but his own passes through him. Yinsen looks vaguely surprised, his hand dropping back to his side.

"You wanted to know." He pauses. "I suppose you don't."

"No," Tony says through gritted teeth, "I don't." And what does that say about him?

"It's alright," Yinsen says gently. "I don't want to know, either."

**8**

"You alright?" Tony startles at the sound of Sarvankar's voice, dropping his wrench and cursing as it flattens a quarter inch steel cylinder he'd just pulled from the forge.

"Yep," he says lightly, "I'm good."

"I heard you talking back here," Sarvankar says, beefy arms crossed over his chest. He is trying not to tower over Tony sitting on his little stool, but it's hard when you're one of the biggest men around, Tony supposes.

"To myself," Tony sighs, rubbing his forehead. He wonders how much that is true. "I'm getting frustrated." Definitely true. All this damn delicate work, his hands aren't steady enough, and now he's distracted.

"Well, you scared the shit out of the Audi driver," Sarvankar informs him, "with your yelling and all. What was that about?"

"Left something in the forge for too long," Tony says. Certainly a lie.

"You should be careful," Sarvankar sighs, looking around.

"The bricks will keep the fire from burning a hole in the ground," Tony assures him, "and the steel plate will make sure it doesn't get out of control."

"If you're sure," his boss replies. "I don't know anything about homemade forges."

"They're better than professional ones." Tony grins. "Ir you make it yourself, you make it right."

"If you're sure," he repeats, with a hint of doubt.

"Oh, c'mon," Tony scoffs, waving a hand. "If there's one thing you can trust me on, it's that I won't do anything stupid."

"That is true," Sarvankar agrees.

**8**

It's finally finished. Tony leans back with a sigh, stretching cramped muscles and shaking them loose. The suit hangs from numerous chains above him, not yet put together but he's tested it and the limbs all function beautifully individually. The best way to make sure it all works together, of course, is to try it out.

"This was easier when you were able to help," he complains, only half actually whining as he attaches the parts carefully. Yinsen chuckles and puts a hand on the chest piece, a lot sleeker than the first one left in the desert.

"I wish I could," he says, and it sounds like the truth. "It looks a lot better than the first."

It does. The suit is a polished, shiny silver, more fitted to his body and so much lighter. The weight should be a cause for concern, seeing how lighter metals are, as a general rule, much weaker than, say, what his missiles are made of. But car parts are the best he had - the suit is made of two separate cars' worth of condensed metal, all the paint removed and the seams as faint as he could make them. The heads-up display is simple; too simple, perhaps, for what he's planning to do, but he doesn't have J-

He doesn't have any outside assistance, he thinks firmly, and therefore has to run everything himself. It will be taxing, but worth it to see his success. The repulsors work, even while he can't build any good weaponry for himself, and he's got the flamethrowers attached to his back now, between the flaps, so he thinks he'll he alright.

He's nervous.

"Go out there and do what you need to do," says Yinsen. Tony takes his words to heart.

"Right," he says, nodding firmly through the faceplate. His repulsors whine as they start up and Yinsen waves.

He's out the garage doors and gone. The building shrinks below him and the rest of the city follows suit and he's flying, he really is, and he whoops and spins and dances figure eights in the sky and it's all so perfect. It's a little chilly through his layers and the suit but that's alright, because he's flying and he's moving, faster than he ever has before, and he's feeling more than the mundane, than the every day could ever give him and he needed this, and Tony is free.

Free.

It takes two hours to cross borders, to get to where he needs to be. Afghanistan is dark, it's awfully early in the morning, about two back in Nagpur and sometime early over here. The stars are out, shining over the desert and maybe if he reached, he could touch the moon.

His systems lock on Starktech (is it Stanetech now? No, his designs, his name, and that's that) a couple of miles to his right and he's there in just under a minute. There's a vague shadow of a terrorist camp below him. Tony wonders if they're sleeping. If they'll even see him coming. If they'll even know they've died.

As he descends upon them, he thinks maybe his promise to not do anything stupid was a lie, too.

Can you put a hole in a car door with an M9? As it happens, the answer is yes.

They come streaming out of tents and holes in the ground and from the shadows, armed and screaming, whether in rage or in agony as Tony lights them all up.

Fire. Fire. Gunfire and chemical fire and the fire in his body, crawling along in his veins. The rush is beyond heady, it's fantastic, and none of these poor fuckers stand a chance, ever hoped to stand a chance. The world is now alight, it's daytime even with the stars, and Tony has never, em never /em, felt so alive.

Flying has nothing on this.

There's a loud booming sound and Tony feels an intense pressure a split second before that pressure shoves him sideways and oh, that was a rock wall. His ears ring and he gets unsteadily to his feet, vision blurring and a sudden headache viciously sabotaging his ability to think properly. There's something wet on his face and it takes a long moment to think, em blood /em, but by the time he's processed this the remaining terrorists have advanced upon him, and their bullets are leaving brutal bruises but he's got two layers of car between him and them, so if he can just move his arms -

Machine guns and rifles alike all turn on him, and through the too-bright haze he feels his suit denting, pushing against his skin and holding tight and it hurts. The pain, though, is nothing to the shock of being shot.

He feels it coming to him: the strain of the metal at one of the weaker plates of his shoulders, the groan of metal under pressure, the snap as one bullet finally penetrates. It's a sort of detached feeling, and at first it doesn't actually hurt. An abrupt chill, perhaps, a sudden void of feeling.

But then, just as quickly, all his fire inside leaks out through the hole and he gasps, feels the hot drain in red, cannot move.

Frozen.

It serves as a sort of trigger, he thinks, even as he topples sideways, clutching at his wounded shoulder and cursing profusely in seven languages, none of them English. The fire pauses as they wonder if they win. Shouted commands in a dozen languages around him and he forces his eyes open (when did they close?) at the nudge of the butt of a gun on his thigh.

It's exactly what he needs.

He reaches up, aims, and fires a repulsor straight in the bastard's face. The look of surprise is melted right off in a flash of light, and the body trails fluid and skin as it falls. Tony heaves himself to his feet, stares at the cauterized hole, fires again. There is no sound now.

As one, the terrorists heft their guns and aim, but Tony is faster. Rapid fire repulsor shots take out guns, incinerate arms and heads and chunks of shoulder and it's raining, but it's not water, it's sand and blood and flesh and bone and Tony revels in it, the way they reveled in his pain. When he's done shooting them all, his head is spinning and his arm is still bleeding flames and he's taken a bit of a beating and he'a killed them all. This, this is the part where he gears up and brings out the fire again. Manic, wild, infuriated, he turns and burns it all to ash. There's almost no switch from "person" to "weapon" because with the Ten Rings insignia on it? It doesn't matter to him.

"Tony." A voice, amongst the blood and the death and his own high-pitched gasps, catches his attention and he turns to see Yinsen standing by the missile stash. "Tony, stop it. You've killed them all."

"I what?" He realizes the man is right, that not all the blood spattered across the once-silver armor is his. "Oh." His voice is hoarse, and it hurts to speak. He used it all up. "Get outta the way," he continues, "I gotta blow it all to hell."

"No you don't." Even now, amongst all the destruction, Yinsen is still calm. "This is why I still call you Tony Stark."

He flinches, horribly, staggering back a step when all his aches and wounds flare up. "Why?"

"Because Tony Stark is the Merchant of Death," he quotes. "And what are you doing now?"

Suddenly, he is just so, very tired. "Right," he mumbles, voice lost over the crackle of fire and the moans of the few still dying.

"You should take these," and here Yinsen waves at the Starktech behind him, "and use them to make you a better suit. You're looking a little beat up."

"That I am," he sighs, clomping over to stare at the boxes. STARK INDUSTRIES, the decals scream at him. The words burn. "So what, just walk away with them?"

"I was hoping you'd fly," Yinsen says. "Walking isn't the best idea."

"I wouldn't make it far," Tony says truthfully.

"I think not," Yinsen agrees. "Go on, pick some up, and get flying."

The flight back is so much longer than the flight there, and the sun is rising right in Tony's face. He drops back into Nagpur with an armload of Starktech (he hasn't been thinking these things through recently) and enters the shop, depositing them behind the long-cooled forge. Not a good hiding spot, but by general law nobody fucks with Acervi's corner. He can rely on that, for now. He removes his armor and cringes at the black smearing and bullet holes, imagines how much of that is reflected on his own body. It stays on the ground where he drops it in twisted fragments.

His apartment has one mirror, full-length, in the kitchen of his two-room apartment. He makes sure to lock the door behind him, strips, and stares.

He is covered in bruises, almost literally. A curving cut spans across from his left collarbone around the reactor, down to the bottom right of his ribcage, by the last floating rib. There's serious inflammation around the reactor, swollen and red and painful to the touch - what happened there? Various cuts and bruises, a network of purples and blues and reds. Then there's the hole through his shoulder, still bleeding sluggishly and almost invisible through the dirt and drying blood, and it looks the worst, worse than his black eye and bruised jaw, than the sheet of flaking brown forcing his eye half closed by proximity to the slash on his forehead. It's not even big, hardly larger than his pinky, but it's obviously the worst. And he can't exactly walk over to a hospital with no medical coverage, can he?

He curses softly to himself and limps over to his closet of a bathroom, taking all his towels and the first aid stuff with him.

**8**

"Can't come?" Sarvankar echoes at nine in the morning. "But you're right here. And what happened to you?"

"Got mugged." Tony attempts a shrug but flinches instead as the starting movement tugs at the bullet wound. Sarvankar's frown deepens.

"Is it more serious than it looks?" he asks. Tony waves his arm vaguely, which hurts, but it's easier than shrugging, so he'll take what he can get.

"I got a hole in my shoulder," he says with a grin with enough manic energy that even he can feel it in the twitching strain of his muscles. Sarvankar looks alarmed.

"And you still came?" he asks incredulously, uncrossing his arms (an unusual change from his default) and reaching over to the side Tony is clearly favoring. "Why?"

"Well, first, because I wanted to tell you in person and I don't have a phone," Tony says reasonably. "Second, because they stole my laptop from me so I came here to get the one from my corner."

"Ah." His friend (dare he call him that?) relaxes and waves him off, but still has a gleam of worry in his dark eyes. "Take a few weeks, alright? Make sure the clinic sees you."

"I promise." Tony grins and disappears behind the curtains and chains to his section of the shop, snatching up his laptop. The little bell on the door nobody uses in favor of the open garage entrance chimes on the front and he wonders if it's the Audi idiot again, back for that oil change every two weeks he said he'd get but probably won't. He slips out between the curtains and calls out a thanks to his boss, ready to sneak out and go home to sleep for, like, a thousand years or maybe ten hours before getting to work on the new suit, because wow the one he'd used this morning is beyond trashed.

Then he hears the visitor.

"- here to pay for Mr Macintosh, the man who came with his Audi two weeks ago."

"Ah, Miss Potts?" That's Sarvankar.

"The one and only." Pepper sounds tired, as tired as she looked when he first saw her at that Starbucks he hasn't dared to enter since he did. He finds himself turning the corner and when he sees her, he drops his laptop. Both their heads snap up to look at him and he ducks, bending down quickly to pick his computer back up – bad move, as it turns out, too sudden and he ends up freezing in place on one knee, waiting for the pain to pass. Sarvankar is over there quickly, helping him to his feet and picking up his laptop for him.

"Wow, that was embarrassing," Tony gasps, letting himself be steadied as he catches his breath. "Fuck. Thanks."

The bald man hands him back the computer and lets go slowly. "You need to rest, Acervi. Do you want me to get someone to help you home?"

"Hell, no," Tony says immediately. "That is too much."

Sarvankar chuckles. "Maybe so, but I worry all the same."

"How kind," Tony grumbles halfheartedly, but doesn't get to continue because suddenly Pepper is there.

"Are you okay?" she asks, sounding worried, and Tony can't help but look up at her face, except when he does they both still. His heart stops at that moment and he sees oh, her eyes are green, and neither of them can stop staring at each other and she knows, oh, she knows, but so does he and he thinks that maybe he can reach out and touch her, that he can go back in time, to before he realized what a shit person he was and just hold her -

"Tony?" she whispers, voice wrecked and eyes full of tears.

He snaps back into focus and leans back. "I'm sorry," he says in stiff Marathi. "I don't speak English."

Her breath catches and there's something terribly sad, gut-wrenching in her eyes. "What did he say?" she asks, her voice trembling.

Sarvankar has the most hurt expression on his face, like it pains him to answer. "He apologizes for not being able to speak English, Miss Potts," he says slowly. "This man's name is not Tony. He is Dante Acervi, my cousin and coworker."

"Oh," she says, ever so quietly, and it breaks his heart to hear. She takes a step back and resumes her professional calm. "I'm terribly sorry. I must have been mistaken." She turns away. "I've just been seeing him everywhere," she adds, in the smallest voice, like no one was meant to hear but her. Tony hears, though. He hears, and it hurts worse than anything he's ever felt.

"I've got to get home," he says, finally accepting the laptop from Sarvankar. "I'll come by. Don't let anyone touch the stuff in my corner."

"Of course not," he says with good humor, but the sorrow in his gaze burns. "I'll see you in a few days, Acervi. Goodbye."

"Bye." He walks, straight-backed, past Pepper and out the door, down the street, up the stairs to his apartment, behind the door. The second he locks the door behind him he slides down the panel of wood and cries.

He spends very little time doing so; these last few weeks have been too emotionally draining for him to really be able to do more than wring out the old washrag. Besides, he's T - a guy, and guys don't just break down crying like that (Yinsen snorts somewhere above him but is ignored). Instead he lurches to his feet and stumbles over to the couch, flicking the laptop on and typing in the password without really looking.

There's a message waiting for him, on an unfamiliar chat program.

MR. GREEN - Nice flying suit. You made the news in Brazil.

Tony sucks in a breath. Okay. Well. This was a possibility he thought through, very thoroughly. Right. He flexes his fingers on the keys and picks a corresponding name.

MR. RED - So you're in Brazil?

MR. GREEN - So you're in Afghanistan?

MR. RED - Close, but no cigar.

MR. GREEN - Funny. Look, I can see that you, whoever you are, are good with tech. I just need some help on that end.

Tony considers this. Carefully. Whoever this Green guy is, he must be smart, to find him. Who's he working with? What's he doing? How badly could this turn out? His mind flashes to Pepper and he shoves it away.

MR. RED - What can I do to help?

**8**

I have nothing to say for myself.


	9. Chapter 9

These author's notes are getting long, so I'll keep it short this time: when I talk about this fic with others, I call it rustfic cuz I'm too lazy to say the whole thing every time.

**8**

2010

MR. RED - What the hell is this weirdass chemical, though.  
MR. GREEN - It's a very rare paralytic, one of the few that I've discovered that has the ability to contain the  
MR. RED - I dunno, looks a lot like a toxin to me, String Bean.  
MR. GREEN - Don't call me that, please.  
MR. RED - Okay, Lima Bean.  
MR. GREEN - Can you not.  
MR. RED - But you and your cells are all bean-like, and green, it's perfect.  
MR. GREEN - It is not perfect and neither I nor my cells are bean-like in any way.  
MR. RED - Would you rather I go with Pea, then? Sweet pea?  
MR. GREEN - How would you like it if I started calling you red names?  
MR. RED - Please do, go ahead.  
MR. GREEN - Okay. Red Riding Hood, Pepper, Chili...  
MR. RED - Not the pepper one.  
MR. GREEN - Not the bean ones, then.  
MR. RED - Okay: Cucumber, Sour Apple, Broccoli, Lettuce Leaf, Wasabi, Pickl  
MR. GREEN - Bean names are fine.  
MR. RED - Yes! Green Bean it is.  
MR. GREEN - Are you ten.

The weird thing about this is, their conversations are in English.

It's not a trial to force himself to read Mr Green's words, nor is it difficult to respond in kind. He hit it off with this random country-hopping stranger immediately, and it's totally routine for them to backhack each other every time they talk. Green is in a new country every few months, if not weeks, while Green himself has narrowed Tony's location down to the very city he lives in. That is impressive, after only, what, a year? of communicating with him.

Basically, Tony loves talking to the guy.

MR. RED - I could be some hot busty blonde, or some horny gay teenager jacking off to our awesome science. You never know.  
MR. GREEN - But see, when you say things like that, I just know you're some lonely middle-aged man with no sense of maturity.  
MR. RED - You wound me.  
MR. GREEN - Not as bad as you hurt yourself. How many cracked ribs?  
MR. RED - None, fuck you very much. The suit is awesome. I am awesome. I am god.  
MR. GREEN - You keep telling yourself that.  
MR. RED - They call me Iron Man for a reason, even if they're entirely wrong about the fact that it's not actually iron. Dear sweet uneducated babies.

He's just not sure how much longer he can.

MR. GREEN - I have a favor to ask.  
MR. RED - As if I'm not building you new laptops or cool tech every few months?  
MR. GREEN - Yes, and thank you for that, but this is different.  
MR. RED - Go on.  
MR. GREEN - I need a sample of your bloo  
MR. RED - No.  
MR. GREEN - I thought you might say that.  
MR. RED - I assume it's so you can have a regular source of untainted blood to compare notes with?  
MR. GREEN - Generally.  
MR. RED - I'm sorry, I can't help you.  
MR. GREEN - What did you do.  
MR. RED - Nothing! Willingly. It's just a thing. That happened.  
MR. GREEN - A thing that happened. It wouldn't happen to involve experimenting on yourself, would it?  
MR. RED - It would not.

They have similar discussions often - every time Tony lets something slip about his physical health (and Green is some kind of doctor, apparently), it turns into some sort of interrogation and Tony wants to hide, to not talk about it. Period. It's rather difficult, actually, to talk about his health and not talk about the arc reactor. So much of him revolves around it.

Such as his newest problem. Possibly his last.

MR. RED - Let's talk about why you're so hell-bent on shooting toxic chemicals into your bloodstream at the slightest rise in your heart rate. I wanna talk about that.  
MR. GREEN - It's not something simple to understand, I can't just explain it to you.  
MR. RED - So it has something to do with your radiation poisoning, then?  
MR. GREEN - In a way. Look, it's complicated.  
MR. RED - How?  
MR. GREEN - Nobody likes me angry. I don't like me angry.  
MR. RED - That doesn't sound so complicated to me.  
MR. GREEN - There's more to it than that.  
MR. RED - What, it's not like you turn into some, I dunno, giant green rage monster, or something, so why would  
MR. GREEN -  
MR. RED -  
MR. RED - You're shitting me.  
MR. GREEN - I think it's about time we meet in person.

So, there's that.

He closes his laptop and sets it aside, onto what is essentially a panel of wood supported by a couple bricks (aka his side table), to stretch. He eases up slightly on the left side, the tug of scar tissue making the movement of his shoulder slightly awkward. Thankfully it's one of only three knots of scarring, the other two on his left thigh (that had been fun) and more recently just to the right of his navel (some anonymous donor handled the hospital bill for him, a fact that still unnerves him). He carefully ignores the pull in his chest, the tightness in his lungs, the flaring sensitivity along his arms and torso as distended veins brush fabric.

Well, work's in a half hour. He tugs on a long sleeved shirt, then a black shirt over that, making sure every inch of his chest is covered, and his arms down to just past his wrists - it doesn't reach there quite yet, but it's getting close. He's read that, when it reaches the tips of his fingers, he's dead. It's a rather grim future, he decides as he leaves his apartment, door locked behind him and a towel over his shoulders. A countdown to the end of his days. It's been slow moving this last year, so maybe he's got a few months before he keels over. As to how much time he's got before he can't get up anymore...

_Maybe one more big weapons bust_, he thinks, _before I go out._

**8**

"Good morning, Sarvankar," he calls, striding into the auto shop with a grin in place. Sarvankar peeks out from the guts of a massive engine.

"It's afternoon, Acervi," he corrects, returning the smile before disappearing again.

"Yeah, yeah. I'll just go grab the lineup." He knows. He totally knows, but he has the good grace to roll with it and pretend that Dante Acervi, the guy with amnesia working in his auto shop, is in no way Tony Stark.

"You were saying last year that you weren't Tony Stark," Yinsen pipes up from the office door. "What made you change your mind?"

"Shut it," he mutters, snatching a clip board off a nail on the wall. The papers list off the different appointments for the day and he chooses the 1330, some truck with transmission problems. This'll be a good distraction.

**8**

The black lines of poison reach the first wrinkle of skin at his wrist. It hurts to breathe.

**8**

So, one more Tony chapter before we go back to Steve. I was all worried about making you guys wait, so I split this chapter in… probably what will end up being, this is one third and chapter 10 is the other two thirds. I wasn't done with this chapter but felt I'd waited too long, so have this until I finish up the next bit in a day or two. Tell me what you think? You know what comments make me feel.


	10. Chapter 10

2011

Each day is met with a deep-seated ache through his bones. It's a difficult feeling to explain to himself, because it's an odd sort of pain he'd never felt before. It doesn't just turn his limbs to lead, or sear like a stab or a bullet, but also travels through his veins, throbbing sluggishly, a muted fire, like lava, invasive like he's never experienced. Certain exercises and sudden movements aggravate it, and he's learned not to sit still for too long, because any movement for an hour after leaves him nauseous and light headed but he has to walk through it to look normal.

It can't be hidden under a shirt anymore. The nausea turns into a lack of appetite, so he doesn't eat. To wake up after a night's sleep is to be stiff and sore all day, so he's resorted to quick catnaps. He gets migraines. His joints ache. He can feel every touch to the raised black lines that crawl out from the reactor housing, over his shoulders, down to his navel, reaching through the veins in his arms to take his hand. Every cold and stomach bug in India has crossed paths with him these last few months, leaving him with a perpetual cough that burns like a hot poker in a thousand places every time he lurches. What food he does manage to eat, much of the time ends up coming back up.

Tony is miserable, and anyone with eyes can see it, can tell it's more than the frequent chills he keeps catching.

Sarvankar asks only once if he needs a doctor, and when Tony says no, never mentions it again. It's there, though, his worry and sadness, hidden behind his casual conversation, peering out in his eyes past the good humor. He's realized by now that it's terminal, Tony knows he has. But there's nothing either of them can do, and his friend is jus a little slow in accepting this simple fact. Tony forges forward, infamous across the continent as Iron Man, popular across the city as Acervi the mechanic.

Stane Industries hates him, a fact which Tony takes no small amount of pride in.

There's one large cell left, practically sitting on the border of Pakistan. Tony's gathered up enough Starktech to repair his suit as needed over the year and a half he's been flying. Yinsen's pulled him out of... sort of, flashbacks, more times than he can count. It's gotten to the point where it's just, find terrorists, blow terrorists up, make a show, and disappear back to India, where he licks his wounds and pretends to be normal again.

Tony waves to Sarvankar as he heads back to his corner, fully intending to jump into the armor the minute the other man leaves (what will he do, when he finds Tony's body?) but a tinny knocking sound at the entrance to the shop gives him pause.

The man hovering just outside is dressed in darker colors, a faded navy button-up and slacks. He's got a watch - or is it one of those special ones that have a monitor - and nicer shoes, scuffed as they may be. Wavy brown hair, combed into submission, greying at the temples, yet the cut suits his slightly round face. His glasses are slightly crooked, obviously well-used.

Tony knows exactly who it is.

"Excuse me," the stranger says in English, "can I - ?"

He sees Tony and, in that moment, he understands. Tony can see it all over his face.

"Would you mind answering a question?" The query is not directed at Tony, but rather at Sarvankar, who shrugs and agrees. "What is your favourite color?"

MR. GREEN - I'll come up with something off the wall, it'll be obvious.

MR. RED - When will I be seeing you?

MR. GREEN - Whenever I find you.

MR. RED - Fair enough.

"Hm... Blue," Sarvankar answers, perfect English as always. "Is this a survey?"

"Absolutely," Mr. Green says. "I'm from Kolkata, actually, I work in an orphanage. When I said I was traveling they asked me to come up with an unusual question to ask everyone I saw. Last time it was favourite animals," he says with a shy grin. He turns to Tony. "What's yours?"

"Ah - " Tony shifts nervously. Of course the man would expect him to speak English, he can write it just fine.

"Acervi doesn't speak English," Sarvankar puts in. "But I can translate?"

"Oh, uh, thank you." Now he looks desperately confused, because they both know who Tony is, but of course Tony has to make things difficult.

"Hey, Acervi, what's your favourite color?" Sarvankar speaks in Marathi for him.

Tony grins. "If his is green, mine is red."

The moment his boss translates, Green's entire body relaxes. "Thank you. The kids'll be thrilled."

"Kids, huh..." Tony thinks about this. "Ask him if he speaks any other languages."

Sarvankar only looks vaguely surprised, and complies. Green laughs, that hint of nervousness returning.

"A few, yes."

Tony nods and sweeps past Green, grabbing his arm and calling to his boss that they'll be back later. The other man just smiles bemusedly and lets himself be dragged off into the city, and what exactly does Tony think he's doing, really?

Tony releases Green and straightens his own shirt out. "Walk with me," he invites in French, but recieves a blank stare. He gestures at himself and the street and starts to walk.

It's Green's turn as he falls into step beside Tony and he tries - Portugese? Tony answers in denial. That's two languages of his he can cross off, and two of Green's.

It must have been an odd sight, two very different men walking down the sidewalk at a painfully slow pace, speaking to each other in varying languages before faltering and trying again in another. Eventually Tony gestures at Green to be silent and rubs his forehead, leading the way up to his apartment almost blindly as he forgoes the headache.

"Coffee?" Green asks in English, and Tony looks up to find they're passing the Starbucks. He catches himself nodding a split second too late, and now Green is giving him that calculating look that means something terrible when used by Sarvankar or Pe-

By his boss. Bad news for him and his schedule. But this time it's not his schedule, but his cover.

He clears his throat. "Yes," he says in Dari, knowing Green won't understand but trying again anyway. The other man nods once, decisively, and gestures for Tony to lead the way.

Green struggles with ordering so Tony gets a black coffee for him, apparently assuming correctly the other man's tastes, and asks for the "special". The lady hands them over a tall cup and a java chip frappuccino.

They blend in relatively well with the small crowds, meandering down the streets at a slow pace. Tony revels in the companionable silence, savoring his chilly drink as he slowly cools from the heat of summer in India while wearing two long sleeved shirts (one isn't enough to hide the swollen veins anymore).

His apartment is... humble, to word it nicely. A small, sixty by sixty one-room and a bathroom, and he's found it surprisingly easy to keep it clutter-free. On one wall is his black couch, which folds out to be his mattress, his little "side table", and the door to the bathroom. The adjacent wall, next to the door, is the kitchen area, consisting of two sinks, a fridge, a stove and oven, three cupboards, and twelve feet of counter. Nearly the entire west wall is a window with threadbare maroon curtains. The east wall is all table, with scattered electronics and their parts covering every inch of it and some of the floor. In the middle of the room, a worn brown rug may have been circular once, but is now an oblong oval-ish shape. The ceiling is low, cracked and stained with water spots. A scratched rectangular wooden table stands off center, with two mismatched chairs. There's a small, shredded cat bed tucked away underneath. Two lights, one above the kitchen table, and one above the east wall's mess, flicker faintly. It's been giving Tony a headache lately, he needs to go get new ones.

He looks around and thinks, home.

"Welcome," he declares in Spanish, "to my humble abode."

There's a small gasp from Green, and Tony turns while consciously not frowning. However, Green isn't looking at his apartment, but rather stares at him.

"You speak Spanish?" the man demands in the same language, and at Tony's nod sighs in relief. "Excellent. Allow me to introduce myself, then."

Tony's not-frown turns into a smile as he shakes Green's proffered hand. "I'm Bruce Banner," he continues, shaking firmly. Tony's hand aches a little when he gets it back, which only makes him smile wider.

"They call me Acervi," he offers, shoving his hands in his pockets. This gives "Bruce" pause, but he accepts it after a moment's thought.

"Can't speak English, then?" he queries. Tony shrugs and kicks his shoes off at the doorway, waiting for the other man to do the same before closing the door. Bruce is clearly waiting, so Tony gives himself another moment to think by giving himself brainfreeze via frappuccino.

"It's complicated," he says finally, suppressing a wince at the lame excuse.

Bruce's look sharpens. "Why is it complicated?"

"You first, Green Bean." That at least cracks a smile, no matter how quick it vanishes.

"Isn't the host meant to accommodate the guest?"

"My house, my rules," Tony sing songs, smirking. The frapp cup is dropped into the tiny bin by the counter. Bruce gives him a flat look and Tony is given the strong impression of the man's favourite line, 'can you not'. He mentally dubs it the 'Tony no face'.

"It's proper social conduct, I believe," he says dryly. Tony rolls his eyes, dropping onto the couch with a sigh that turns pained at the end as he jars his aches.

"Fine," he says dramatically. "What do you want to know?"

"Oh, "Bruce says airily, triumphantly, vaguely smug (rude!), "you know. Why you apparently can't speak English, even though you can type it just fine. Why you're using a metal suit to steal tech and blow up terrorist groups - don't give me that face, it's obvious," he adds. "And oh, tell me why there's a black game of Tetris climbing up your neck, that'd be nice to know, too."

Tony claps a hand to his neck, swearing in frustration and not a small amount of pain as his palm connects with the over-sensitive tissue. "Is it gone that far? Shit."

"Looks like I'm not the only one with a 'condition'," Bruce oh-so-helpfully observes as he tugs ineffectually at the collar of his shirt.

"Shut up," Tony complains, giving up, "it's just a thing. You know, like.. like a cold. But more permanent."

Bruce frowns suddenly and lurhes forward to get a closer look, ignoring Tony's scoot backwards. "Are those your veins?" He shoves Tony's hand away and prods at one, freezing at his sharp inhale. "They are," he realizes, stepping back with a look of concern. "Look, Acervi? That's heavy metal poisoning, you can't just let that go like you have been."

"I know," Tony snaps, incensed. "But there's nothing I can do. It's a thing, that has happened, and it's not important."

"So what's more important than your health, blowing up bad guys?" Bruce shoots back.

"Yes!" Tony explodes, leaping to his feet and gesturing wildly at the both of them. "It's not a thing I can just will away, or just drink a potion to make better. It's a real, serious deal that I cannot stop. It's - it's," he sighs, anger draining away. "Have you been able to cure your radiation problem?"

Bruce suddenly finds something fascinating about the floor. Tony winces again, sure he's gone too far. There's something about the way Bruce is standing, with his shoulders hunched and his head down, that hurts to look at with a sort of miserable familiarity.

I've gotten close," Bruce says quietly. "So close, but then it turns around on me and it's like I haven't done anything."

"It's like that," Tony says seriously, calmed by the sudden quiet. "In the end you can't get rid of it. If I'm going to die, and it'll be soon, I might as well take some of the bad guys out with me."

Bruce has this painful looking twist to his face. "Maybe," he says hesitantly. "Maybe I can find something. I'm more likely than you to find something, anyways, your area of expertise isn't with the human body. Mine is."

"That's nice," Tony says. There's one variable Bruce doesn't know about, probably won't know about, and that's the arc reactor, which really is the clincher on this deal, isn't it? No matter what this guy tries, it'll all be in vain.

"Just," Bruce says firmly, "let me try."

It's tempting, even if Tony knows it's useless. This guy, whom he met on the internet by trading hacks like handshakes, who has been asking for help from him for two years, is now asking to help and it's a little overwhelming. Just a little.

"I – fine. Good luck."

"Thank you." Bruce looks immensely relieved and Tony feels guilty.

There's a scratching at the window wall and Bruce jumps to look, while Tony reclines back into the couch with a heavy sigh. A little clicking of claws on the ground, and then a twelve pound lump drops onto his lap, situating its paws on his chest right where they hurt the most (on either side of the reactor, the little shit). Tony groans, allowing the creature to lick his stubble earnestly.

"What," Bruce says, "is that."

Tony sits up, earning an indignant hiss as he adjusts the cat in his arms. "This is Pepper," he says brightly. "My cat. She hangs around outside, but she comes in to cuddle every so often."

Pepper, whose eyes had been screwed up as she hissed her displeasure, whips around to glare blue ice at their guest. She's an average-sized cat, with sharp ears, a dark ginger tabby coat, and dainty paws. Her feather duster tail whips Tony in the face and he garbles a complaint as she assesses Bruce, swatting it out of his eyes.

"Well," Bruce says cautiously, "it's nice to meet you, Pepper." She snorts in a most uncat-like fashion, lumbering around and settling herself rather rudely in Tony's lap. He sighs and strokes the prickling fur on her spine. "You know," he continues to Tony, "cats come to comfort people who are lonely."

"That's nice." Tony raises an eyebrow. "You wanna see the suit?" Bad subject change, but Tony does not want to go down that road.

"You mean do I want to see mental five year old dick around in a metal suit?" Bruce shrugs, adjusting his glasses.

Tony puts a hand over the reactor in mock hurt. "You just keep aiming to hurt me, and it's offensive and also not very nice. I'm a genius, I'll have you know."

**8**

"That, I'll admit, is incredible."

"I know," Tony says smugly, pulling the helmet on and waving in the suit as he flies out the back door, leaving Bruce in the dust (sorry, buddy). It's a second skin, a healthy one, and he can lose his aches and pains for a few hours when he wears it. A relief, his temporary cure. As Eurasia's Iron Man, he can put a hold on his own reality and be an avenging angel, destroying America's technology – his technology, but no one can know that – from out of the wrong people's hands. If that happens to include the military at some point, well.

But this time, he finds no joy, no vicious satisfaction, at lighting it all up, and killing them all. How many people has he killed like this? He wonders suddenly. It's a sick thought, a dark feeling that he doesn't want to know, that answers.

He flies away with a bag full of palladium and a backdraft of an explosion to speed him along.

Bruce is still there when he comes back, in the early hours of the morning. The suit takes some time in removal, but he has the good grace to clap and call him an idiot when he's down to a shirt and jeans.

"I think I've reached my diagnosis," Bruce announces, clapping slower now. "You're insane."

He really knows how to land the blows, doesn't he? Tony glowers, affronted, and tucks the helmet back under his desk. Just keep em coming, why don't you, maybe I'll keel over from your insults first." He pauses at the constipated look on Bruce's face. "Bad joke?"

"Very bad," Bruce says seriously, raising an eyebrow. "So what's with the light bulb in your chest?"

Oh. Uh. Shit. Only one shirt, right. "Yeah, that. Well, to start, all my lovely new tattoos start there..." Tony gestures at his neck.

"Let me see," Bruce demands, lunging forward and grabbing at the hem of Tony's shirt. When he tugs upwards, Tony finally lurches backwards.

"Whoa, um, wait, I don't think – " Normally he might've cracked a comment about stripping, but this is the most sensitive area on his body. In a bad way. "C'mon, Brucie, let's – " His backside hits the corner of the table and he sucks in a breath. Right on a sore spot.

"Let me see," Bruce says softly. "Please."

Tony stares at him for a solid minute. This is his best kept secret, his darkest secret, his life. His death. He knows that it only makes sense to show the other man, get it over with, accept help, but feelings defy logic, don't they?

Finally he aquiesces, and Bruce lets go long enough for him to pull the shirt up and over his head. It's cold in his corner, but his shiver is more of nerves and maybe a little bit of fear.

It's not a pretty sight. The reactor continues to glow a reassuring blue, but the swollen black veins snaking outwards tells the real story. The whole area is, when not lined with black, the painful looking (and really, it is) red of something infected. It's a nasty network of greens and blues, turning the untainted skin a sickly metallic shade. His shoulders, his arms, his torso and down past his ribcage, all reflect how far gone he is. Maybe now, he thinks bitterly, Bruce will see and understand.

"Jesus," Bruce breathes, reaching forward; when Tony tenses instinctively, he drops his hand but continues to stare, eyes mapping out every inch of the damage. He looks down at himself, flinching slightly at the sight of the bloodless scars from surgery, stark white jagged lines and knots amongst the color. It's fighting against instinct to leave his hands loose and relaxed on the table, instead of covering it all up so no one can see again. "What happened?"

"Terrorists," Tony says shortly. "Their bombs put shrapnel near my heart, so my doctor dug out my sternum and put an electromagnet in its place. Just in case, you know, if I actually wanted to live after being awake through the initial surgery."

So you use this to protect your heart AND power your suit?" Bruce shakes his head. "You're not just insane, you're downright mental. What powers it?"

"Oh, you know." Tony waves his hand airily, scowling all the same. "A few grams of palladium."

"Palladium?" Bruce repeats, a full octave higher. "Are you stupid?"

"It's the only element that can power it," Tony says defensively. "It's not as if I wanted to stick a chunk of radioactive metal in my ribcage. I mean, good on the doctor for the idea of electromagnet, but really."

"I feel I should be offended," Yinsen says crossly, very suddenly standing to his immediate right. It's an exercise of very good control to not jump a mile in the air with an undignified squeak. Thankfully, all he does is flex his hands on the edge of the table and stare at the floor.

There's a very long, very awkward silence before Bruce sits down heavily on one of the cleaner benches, nearly braining himself on a heavy chain hanging from the ceiling.

"You're going to have to explain everything, from the beginning, in detail. We can start with your real name."

"I already said, Acervi." Of course he would know already. Of course.

"Yes, you said that's what people call you. What's your real name?"

Tony swallows. All or nothing, he supposes. "You can call me Tony."

"That's not all in, Stark," Yinsen says snidely, putting emphasis on the last word.

Bruce smiles. "Nice to meet you, Tony. Now, mind telling me about these terrorists?"

**8**

Bruce reclines on the couch, allowing Pepper to nudge at his shoulder. Tony's in the kitchen, frying vegetables and a little bit of chicken. He won't be eating much, but after hearing about the other guy (Tony refuses to call Bruce's alter ego an 'it') he figures Bruce must eat a lot.

"You know SHIELD's probably noticed you by now, right?" Bruce says conversationally. "God knows they've been after me for years."

Tony piles the food onto a large plate and fills the pan with soapy water to soak. "Dinner."

"Thanks," Bruce says pleasantly, sitting across from him at the table.

Tony passes him a smaller plate and a fork, the large dish in the center of the table. "What's SHIELD?"

"Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division. They're the people that handle guys like you and me. Looks good," he adds approvingly, piling the veggies onto his plate. Tony steals a zucchini slice and Bruce pretends not to see.

"Us, as in the badass community?"

Bruce snickers. "Yeah, that's who they're supposed to handle. Usually, they try for recruitment first. But when a person starts turning into a threat, or a potential one, they usually turn the negotiations from peaceful to men knocking at your door with big guns."

Tony scoffs, playing with his tiny plate of cabbage and chicken. When Pepper mewls pitifully by his feet, he tosses the meat down to her. "As if they could find me... have they been following you?"

Bruce smirks around a forkful of carrot. "They try." Tony makes the appropriate questioning noise and Bruce continues. "I let them think they've got eyes on me sometimes. I show up on their radar a bit, let them see I'm in no trouble - or causing it - so they don't try too hard to find me. I'm pretty sure they still believe I'm holed up in a cabin in the Himalayas."

"Are they looking for me?" Pepper seems to give up on him and jumps up onto the table, tucking in and chewing at Tony's food. He lets her.

"Of course. They were searching the moment you attacked that first terrorist group," Bruce eyes the arc reactor critically through the single shirt he's wearing - at home means comfort, right? "Luckily, you're not very easy to track."

"Nobody's looking for a mechanic in the middle of India," Tony answers. "Quit staring, is there something I missed in explaining?"

"None that I can think of at the moment."

Tony stands up and collects his now empty dish, upsetting Pepper, who glares at him. The pot seems clean enough so he starts washing. Mindless work does him good sometimes, but with Bruce around it seems he's got to think about the way he acts - with Bruce, he's Tony. Outside, he's Acervi. He hadn't realized how well he kept his own mask up against himself. "After work, I'll show you the tranq I made you."

"Alright," Bruce says amiably, stroking Pepper. What a suck up, Tony thinks fondly. He's going about it the right way, anyways.

**8**

In truth, Chels and I finished this chapter on Saturday. She acted as Bruce-in-the-flesh, because apparently if he's not an anonymous chat user I can't write him. But that's not the point. The point is, I fear my drive for writing this fic is failing. If it dies completely, I may never write another chapter again. Proof of this can be found in Simply Blue, a Homestuck fic I haven't truly updated since September. Once I reached about the same amount of words as I have this time... Well. Here's hoping I see you all in chapter eleven, with Steve (sometime this century!).


	11. Chapter 11

It's a hellish world, Steve decides, and the goal is to distract you from figuring that out. That's why there are all these lights, all these people, all these new things to do, why no one will leave him alone, SHIELD or no. He's lost count of the amount of times he's been propositioned by a woman, of the ways Fury's people try to disguise themselves so he won't know they're following.

He knows exactly how many times he's been propositioned by a man (nine) however, and how many times he's seen Fury himself in a bar or convenience store (sixteen), a finding he thinks strange, because what is the director of a top-secret government organization doing buying a slurpee from 711?

Following Steve, he supposes. Or maybe he really is that normal. Fury does always get the cola flavor.

It's been three weeks. Three weeks of going through the motions, deliberately not thinking about dead friends or their children, focusing instead on the dwindling amount of natural beauty left in the world. Like cherry blossom trees. He heard that these trees came from Japan, and with them it's easy to forget the role that country played in his war - World War II, they call it, as though they're expecting another. The thought leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. Nuclear weapons, he's heard. Like the atomic bomb, he's heard. Why doesn't Stane Industries make them like Howard Stark used to, he's heard. Tony Stark was useless, he's heard. And Stane is no better.

He has nightmares, sometimes.

He would have thought they'd be the typical sort of frightening, like being alone in the empty room of his life, or that breathless moment before the plunge that led to his current situation, or more likely, the horrors of war. He does have those sometimes. He wakes from a dream of churning black water, being the little Steve amongst the modern crowds of New York, swollen infected wounds and the cries of dying men. Those make him sick. But it's the memories that are the worst. He dreams of wandering nights with Peggy, smiles and laughs with her as they dance into the early hours. He hugs Bucky, grins and runs and loses his breath and fights the war until dusk. He gets a kiss from his mother, a gentle smile, days of caring for her as she cared for him, of peaceful early mornings with a book and a blanket.

It's from those nightmares, the sick, twisted, happy ones, that he wakes crying.

He makes the shivers go away by attempting to sketch. The crude, shaky lines are somehow a comfort. He draws one person from his past, every night he had a nightmare. Old childhood friends. The man who ran the bookstore. All his schoolteachers. His mom. His friends. The Howling Commandoes. Peggy. Howard. Erskine. The nasty generals and faces from across the street. Ladies Bucky tried to set him up with. Everyone.

He fills two sketchbooks, having drawn all of them once. Just once. After that, he can't make himself do any more. And so he has no reprieve from his dreams.

He wakes up once, and thinks of Tony Stark.

Googling him takes no effort and pulls up thousands of pictures, some funny, some dramatic, many self-incriminating in such a way that the secondhand embarrassment is almost too much. Nobody missed him when he died. There was mourning, there's pictures of the funeral, but only one woman was crying, and then there was the hate. People talked about him being a patriot, a great man, a genius, and people talked about him being a playboy, a slut, an alcoholic, and fifty kinds of 'what an asshole' or 'he deserved it', and these are the ones that count to the world. He wonders what Tony Stark would say if he saw all this.

Perhaps a rueful smile, a faint crinkling of his brow, hurt darkening his eyes behind those ridiculous gold shades. He would pose and posture and brush it all off, and when he got home he'd sit down heavily and sigh, run a hand through his gelled hair and bleed inside because if there's one thing people are good at, it's hurting other people. Their words are poison.

Tony Stark is dead, and Steve just drew him twice.

**8**

The days are beginning to lengthen, and Steve sees the effect of the oncoming chill. He doesn't mind, though, not as much as he thought he would. He surprises himself again by barely feeling the cold. Desensitization, perhaps. Whatever the reason, he's fine with a light jacket and jeans on a day when everyone else is breaking out the scarves and pea coats. He tries to remember what it felt like to freeze, and can't.

The giant screens on walls are fascinating. They even play outdoors, which Steve wonders at because doesn't water damage electronics? Science must have done something, he supposes, and promptly feels stupid for thinking.

He likes walking through the heavier populated parts of town, because he gets to look while not being looked at. He hears the everyday chatter, the common news, learns the obscure references of pop culture. Hears about popular shows from different and goes home to Netflix them (and isn't Netflix cool?) and discovers the way the world works with the internet. Makes connections, finds the right places, makes a home out of a tiny hole-in-the-wall diner. Hears about international activity as he enjoys a burger and fries at Byron's.

"- Eurasia's mysterious Iron Man has struck, this time dangerously close to the border of Pakistan. The explosion could be seen for miles as he destroyed another terrorist weapons depot early this morning before once again, disappearing before the authorities could arrive. He's escaped government tracking and various arrests for the last two years now. What are they doing? How long will Iron Man be allowed – "

Steve glances over at the TV mounted on the wall above the register from his spot at the counter. The screen shows a silver blur flying in over a dark spot on the ground; a pause, then the whole place lights up in flames and smoke. The silver blur is visible for a short distance, and then it's gone.

Steve stares in shock.

"Mr Rogers?" The waitress sounds concerned, and he turns his gaze to her. She looks troubled. "Are you alright?"

"I – yeah," he says, setting down his burger. "Can I get this to go?"

"Sure." She smiles warmly and takes his half-eaten plate. He returns her smile, hands fisted in the pockets of his jacket. He's antsy. He's got questions.

Is this what Fury was waiting for?

He finds the man in a bar a couple buildings down, slides into a chair next to him and pulls out the rest of his lunch. Fury orders him a beer.

"You're not very subtle," Steve observes. Fury chuckles.

"I don't need to be," he says. "It was a statement. Let you know I'm here."

"Right," Steve says flatly. "So. Iron Man."

"Iron Man," Fury agrees. "I take it you saw the news."

"I did." He studies the half a burger in his hands, the cooling fries. "Two years, they said."

"Too long," Fury says. "That's why we need you."

Steve grimaces. "What makes you think I'll be able to do what SHIELD and the government can't do?"

"You're Captain America, is why." Fury reaches over and steals the biggest fry. "Look, Rogers. We can't just leave him to do whatever – thank you," he adds, taking the two glasses as the waiter reappears. He sets one down in front of Steve and swallows the other down in a few gulps.

"Why not?" Steve inquires. "That's what you've been doing."

Fury's smile turns downward. "We weren't able to stop him," he says seriously, setting the glass carefully onto the coaster. "He's there, and then he's gone, and we have no time to get a tracker on him, or even get close."

"Well, all he's doing is blowing up terrorists – "

"And what will we do when he gets bored?" Fury walks right over his protests. "He's attacked us before, to blow up the Stane Industries technology. We think that's what he's doing now, too. And when he's killed all the terrorists, who's to stop him from turning around and killing us too? Rogers, _this man is a threat."_

Steve swallows. "I understand."

Fury glares at him. "Do you, really?"

"…yes."

"Good." The director stands and drinks Steve's beer too. "C'mon, back to HQ. We've got a lot to discuss."

Steve packs away his burger again and wonders if he'll ever get to eat it.

**8**

Byron's is actually a sort of fast food here in Hawaii, with awesome things like teri steak and barbecue chicken (NOT the same as the stuff with barbeque sauce, thank god) and curry and burgers with cheese and teri sauce and mac salad on a bed of lettuce and HEAPS OF LOVELY RICE AND PASSIONFRUIT JUICE or whatever kind you like but lilikoi's my favourite. Uh so yeah. There's that, and I don't know how far the chain has gone (is there a Byron's on the mainland?) so I turned it into a burger place in mourning for the Byron's that closed near my house.


	12. Chapter 12

Terribly sorry for how late this was, UGH. BUT! Good things happened! The lovely Kadigan is now my beta, so there'll be much fewer mistakes from now on, if at all - she's really sharp, it's great. (Also, if you're reading this fic then my assumption is that you've read hers (especially Revision oh man). If you aren't, I suggest you remedy that. It's a very strong suggestion.) ANYWAYS. I swear I haven't lost motivation yet - I've got some great cheerleaders, and they are you! Please, as always, tell me what you think. Much love!

**8** **_"The chicken has flown the coop, I repeat, the chicken has flown the coop."_**

_"Shut UP, Clint."_

Steve tries his hardest not to smile as he listens to the two SHIELD agents' antics over the radio. At the same time, however, he wonders how two agents on a mission can be so carefree, so casual. He chances a glance to his left and sees Fury almost smiling, but not quite.

"Barton," Fury commands, "focus."

_"Yes sir,"_ Barton (who must be Clint, as the other speaker is a woman) replies brightly, and the radio switches off.

"What did he mean, the chicken - thing?" Steve asks. Fury only snorts.

"He's full of bad bird puns," the director explains, uncrossing his arms. "Hawkeye," he supplies at Steve's bewildered expression.

"Oh." Steve thinks about this. 'Hawkeye' is a codename then, like 'Captain America'. "And the - ?"

"Black Widow."

"I see." Sounds dangerous. Steve resolves to draw them when he gets home, to guess what they might look like. Maybe he can send the sketches to the people themselves. See how accurate it is, or isn't. "And they're in India?"

"That's Iron Man's confirmed location, yes."

"That's pretty... vague," Steve ventures. How does Fury expect to find one man, who's apparently very good at hiding, in a whole country? Maps imply that country is quite large, actually, and well-populated.

"We've got our two best working on it," Fury states. He looks mildly defensive.

"Black Widow and Hawkeye?" Steve clarifies.

"That's correct."

"And they'll find Iron Man?"

"At the very least," Fury says. "They're more likely to find the man first, and persuade him to show them the suit."

"So what's my job, then?" Steve asks, frowning.

"We need you to -"

The communications systems crackles back to life. "_-told you it wasn't._" Black Widow's voice is snappish, tight. Hawkeye hurries to defend himself.

_"A lot of things implied that-"_

_"A man that FAT couldn't fit in the suit, Clint, physics doesn't work like that." _

_"He was the right height and had the right credentials-"_

_"He wasn't the right guy."_

"Hawkeye's 'chicken'?" Steve asks, and in the immediate silence, wishes he hadn't.

There's a sudden outbreak of uncontrolled snickering over the line.

_"Good job, Clint."_

_"Oh man, Cap, you heard that?"_ Hawkeye sounds mortified. _"Oh god, Captain America just heard me using bird jokes - Tasha, why didn't you stop me?"_

_"Your idiocy, your reputation,"_ Black Widow says flatly.

Steve has the vague feeling that he's interrupting some long-standing argument.

"Have you found our guy yet?" Fury demands, and he thinks it's more to get the agents back on track than it is to confirm the obvious.

_"Nothing today, sir,"_ Black Widow answers promptly. _"That's it for this city. We arrive in Nagpur tomorrow at 0900." _

_"That's nice,"_ Hawkeye says. _"Do you speak Nagpurese?"_

_"It's Marathi, Clint, and no."_ Widow sighs, audibly inches away from strangling the other agent. Steve hides a amile at the picture his imagination supplies. It's the clearest shot of what he thinks they look like so far. _"Unless you've been hiding some secret talent from me."_

_"Nope."_

"Get off the comm lines," Fury growls, and they're gone. The sudden quiet is slightly strange with the absence of the two personalities, whether or not they were actually present. Steve stands still to Fury's right, carefully not thinking too much about these agents'... reliability? Consistency? At least they're good people. He has no doubt that they'll do their best. Widow, at the very least, will be serious, and if Fury calls Hawkeye one of his best agents then he must be something special, too...

"Sounds like they've got it handled," he says eventually, looking over the director's shoulder to the wall behind them. He spies the smallest scratch on the reflective steel walls and considers how it got there.

Fury gives him a hard look. "They might," he agrees. "But just the two of them won't be able to get the job done alone. Not in this situation."

"So what do I do?" Steve suddenly feels his lack of verbal respsct towards Fury and tries not to cringe.

"Aside from babysit Barton?" Fury turns and picks up a paper off his desk, handing it over. Steve examines the photo of Iron Man, guns and lasers blazing as the desert explodes before him. It's an aesthetically pleasing shot, clearly taken by someone with an artist's eye. "Iron Man is dangerous. My agents are good, but they need to be ensured that they'll have protection. They need a shield." He gives an indicative nod. "That's you."


	13. Chapter 13

I am SO SORRY, guys, that this took so long. About halfway through I was like OHP. I'LL WORK ON THIS LATER and then I never did. So. There's that. Anyways, thanks again to my lovely perfect beta, Kadigan. 3 Also thank YOU all for reading and, as usual, tell me what you think!

**8**

Steve used his nice colored pencils for this.

A man with dirty blond hair narrows his slate-grey eyes at something off the page. Not quite middle-aged, but the beginnings of crow's feet at his eyes betray him. He's wearing a deep red and black bulletproof vest and black pants, tucked into solid military combat boots. His tanned arms are bare and well-muscled, faintly scarred in places. He's pulling a standard SHIELD-issue M9 from its holster, but the weapon doesn't suit him. Every line of the Hawkeye from Steve's head has been lovingly inked and colored, and as he sets the pencils aside he wonders if the agent looks even vaguely like the man in his imagination.

Black Widow is tall, Hawkeye's height, with a strong but lean body and a slightly wider waist. She's got the same type of clothing that Hawkeye is wearing, except with long sleeves and fingerless gloves. Her boots are slightly smaller in bulk, and the under armor she's wearing creeps up to her neck. She's tan, too, with deep brown hair that's blonde at the roots. Unlike Hawkeye, she's staring directly up at Steve with one finger on the safety of her pistol.

He's a little more confident about Widow.

What Steve doesn't understand is how SHIELD's headquarters can be in the middle of Upper Manhattan and no one seems to question it. There's some modern stereotype for old government buildings, he thinks he remembers, where if it's abandoned it'll be full of people who thought it would be a good place to smoke, or do drugs, or commit murders or homeless people decide to make it their homes, or something. Yet here, there's nobody, and somehow Steve manages to walk right up to the front door and enter without any trouble. The outside looks terrible, honestly, and just the place for those types of people.

It's a weird contrast to the inside, which is all lights and gleaming shiny parts and agents in suits. Steve is immeasurably grateful that they decided to ditch the 40s theme last week, because the regular SHIELD environment is obviously more natural for everyone there, and their comfort relaxes him in turn.

For the most part, the crowd of agents parts as he passes. Some of them offer greetings or nods in his direction, while others are clearly victims of his angry visit to Fury the month before - he can tell because they refuse to look him in the eye and fidget, just slightly. He almost regrets his previous actions when he sees them.

There's suddenly a thing in his way and he barely has time to realize this before he walks into it, head-on. Papers fly, many of them not his own, and an unfamiliar voice curses quietly. Steve backs up, apology on the tip of his tongue, but the other man looks up and speaks first.

"Captain America," he breathes, and his half-frown splits into a grin that doesn't quite fit the rest of his appearance. Steve sighs, willing the irritation away.

"Steve Rogers," he says calmly, offering a hand and ignoring the little voice that says no, no Steve Rogers anymore. Today only needs Captain America. The agent slowly takes his hand, seemingly nervous, but his grip is firm. He's still smiling.

"Phil Coulson," he says. His smile fades slightly when he glances down at the floor. "It's great to meet you in person," he adds, dropping Steve's hand and bending down to pick up all the papers. Steve hurries to help, swallowing a flash of guilt at the sight of the mess.

"I'm sorry for causing this mess," he says, grimacing as he gathers all the papers within reach into a neat stack.

"Oh, no," Coulson replies with a more neutral smile. He's got Steve's portfolio in his hands, also a casualty of the collision. "It's quite alright. Is this yours?"

"Oh, uh, yes," Steve says hastily, holding out the stack. "Sorry these are such a mess-"

It's too late; Coulson is opening the portfolio even as he asks, "Do you mind if I look?" and Steve prepares to be embarrassed.

"Oh," Coulson says, looking startled. "Is this Agent Barton?"

"Er," Steve says.

"It looks just like him," Coulson continues, examining his drawing closely. "Did you have a picture reference? You can't have met him, Captain, he's been in India for the last month and I was still watching you sleep then -"

"Uh," Steve starts.

"SHIELD was observing," Coulson corrects himself, "your recovery."

"Um," Steve tries again.

"Strictly medical reasons." Coulson clears his throat. "You understand." He looks nearly as mortified as Steve feels.

"...Right," he manages eventually. "May I -?" He gestures to his portfolio; Coulson snaps it shut and hands it over immediately.

"Yes, of course, sorry." There's a few more moments of awkward fumbling before they both stand, papers gathered and put away. Coulson brushes the jacket of his suit with one hand, clearing his throat.

"Well, Captain," he says, "is there anything I can do for you?"

"Actually, yes," Steve answers, glancing down the empty corridor. "I uh, don't actually know where I'm going."

"Where do you need to go?" Coulson asks. Steve shrugs a little, unsure of what to say.

"I'm meeting with him in some conference room, but I don't know which one," he admits, tucking his portfolio under one arm.

"I see," Coulson says, dropping into some sort of default-SHIELD-agent state. "I was actually on the way there, myself. I can take you."

"Yes, please," Steve says gratefully, and follows the shorter man back the way he came. It's a mess of security checks and sharp turns. He's nearly dizzy by the end of it, and quite sure he'll never find his way out, but somehow Coulson knows exactly where to go. They walk in silence for several minutes, not tense but not quite comfortable, either.

So Captain America fans are still around. He'll never not find it at least a little strange, and the fact that this man never let it pass as a phase only weirds him out a little more. Meeting a Cap fan is kind of surreal, actually, because even though he doesn't feel like Private Rogers anymore, he certainly doesn't feel like a Captain America, but he wears that mask because it's the only one that really matters now. He wonders what Agent Coulson would think if he heard about Steve's opinion of Captain America.

"We're here," Coulson says calmly, stopping and turning quite suddenly to the left. A string of twenty-three numbers typed into the keypad where the handle should be opens the door, and he leads the way inside.

_"- down the National Highway from Mauda, across the Khanhan River."_ That's Widow, reporting for their travel log. Steve follows Coulson into the near-empty briefing room. Fury is there, hands clasped behind his back and glowering at the black screen.

"And where are you now?" he inquires, turning to the map of India on the table. There are rows of red x's all over the Maharashtra state and beyond, covering nearly the entire map in tiny marks of red ink.

_"Outside a local mechanic's shop a couple blocks from the marketplace,"_ Clint answers. _"We heard the guy who works here, how do you pronounce it -"_

"_Acervi,_" Widow supplies.

_"Right, Ahcervee, he's apparently really good with all kinds of tech, and can fix any problem with your car." _

"Uh huh." Clearly the director has heard this before, and remains unimpressed. He waves a hand at Coulson without looking up; Coulson takes it as the cue it is and shuts the door behind Steve and himself. "Captain," Fury greets them. "Agent. Hawkeye was just explaining to us why we care about a mechanic."

_"He's not Indian?"_ Hawkeye tries. Fury frowns at that.

"Well then, what is he?"

_"We don't know yet,"_ Widow answers, _"but overall we feel he's someone to look at."_

Fury sighs. "I wanna see some progress sometime soon, agents."

_"Rent us an Audi to break?"_ Hawkeye asks hopefully. Beside Steve, Coulson snorts.

"Really, Barton, is an Audi necessary?" he asks, arms folded over his chest.

_"That's what we told the locals we have,"_ Barton says cheerfully. _"They all seemed to think that was funny, especially when we asked after this guy." _

"... Coulson, rent them an Audi."

"Sir." Coulson nods and disappears through the door.

Isn't an Audi a really expensive car?

_"So, Cap is there?"_ Hawkeye asks, a hopeful note brightening his voice.

"I am." Steve pipes up, taking the chance to insert himself into the conversation. "Actually, I wanted to ask you something..."

Barton helps walk him through sending a picture with his iPhone to Barton's own SHIELD-issued phone. He makes sure both of this pictures go through, hoping this isn't too distracting, that he isn't too inaccurate, that maybe one day he'll meet these people.

_"Holy shit,"_ Hawkeye says suddenly, and Steve thinks that maybe he received the message. _"That's me."_

"Agent Coulson said it looked like you," Steve says, fighting a small smile.

_"It is exactly like me,"_ Barton confirms. _"How the hell did you do that? Did you get a picture?"_

"It's just what I thought you might look like," Steve offers, "based on your voice and personality."

_"His nose is too small,"_ Widow declares suddenly.

_"It is not -"_

_"But you are a very good artist, Captain,"_ she continues, steamrolling Barton's protests. _"I didn't know you had a talent for drawing."_

"Thank you," Steve says honestly. He thinks it may be cheesy to describe what he's feeling as a "little warm bubble of happiness", but honestly that's the most accurate description he's got.

_"So,"_ Barton says, and now that Steve's got an apparently accurate picture of him in his head, he can see the agent's imminent confusion as the comm catches the tiny beeping that phones make when you press buttons (it's a little annoying), _"is this Tasha?"_

_"I wish,"_ Widow comments. Steve bites back a sigh. He knew he couldn't get both of them right, but it seems Widow is completely wrong. _"Do you know how much harder red hair is to maintain when you're trying to be unremarkable?"_

Barton snickers. _"She's way shorter than me, Captain. Sorry."_

_"I can cut you down to my height, if you want."_ Her voice is pleasant, cheerful, even, and Steve feels the appropriate mild terror at the subtle murderous undertone.

_"Please don't."_

"I'll have to side with agent Barton this time," says Coulson, reappearing in the doorway with a handful of paperwork. "We need him with his legs intact. I have your registration with the Maharashtran government, agents. You now are in possession of a silver 2011 A5 coupe. You'll find it in your hotel parking lot -"

"_Keys?_" Barton asks.

" - and the keys will be delivered to your room momentarily, thank you for interrupting, Hawkeye."

_"Sorry, mom."_

Widow makes a pleased sound. _"That is a nice car."_

_"That is a very nice car,"_ Barton comments. _"Sort of, small?"_

_"Be nice, we're about to break this car."_

"Turn the comms off when you do that," Fury says. Steve had forgotten he was there.

**8**

Apparently wrecking a car takes two and a half hours. Unfortunately, Steve can do a lot in two and a half hours.

Agent Coulson allowed him to look at the paperwork for the Audi, which gave him something to do for forty-five minutes as he read about how modern cars work. He wonders why anyone would want a stick shift nowadays when the car can do all the gear changing for the user. Personal preference, he supposes.

Back in 1945, wrecking a car could take less than a minute. It's odd that it's taking so long, he thinks. While Coulson and Fury discuss... whatever they're talking about, Steve wanders outside in search of someone to ask about cars. The agent he finds is perfectly happy to help, even going so far as to hunt down an A5 repair manual for him.

Understandably, everything in the manual is completely lost on him, but it's interesting nonetheless. What it does tell him is that yes, it is possible to destroy a car in very little time. According to the manual, however, there are so many ways to ruin a car it's almost ridiculous. Almost, because anything with that amount of small moving parts is bound to have innumerable potential faults. This train of thought, however, leads him to wondering once again what Hawkeye and Widow could be doing to that car.

He considers spending time down in HQ's gym, but he knows that if he goes there now he won't be leaving for hours after, and he wants to be there when they take the car to the shop. Coulson promised to call him when the two agents came back on the comms, but that could be any time -

Never mind.

_"Captain Rogers?"_

"Sir?"

_"Phil is fine, Captain."_

Right. "Have they finished?"

_"They have,_" Coulson answers, _"and they're down the street from the shop."_

"I'll be right there." Now to find his way back to the conference room.


	14. Chapter 14

Forever thanks to the amazing Kadigan, who catches all my stupid mistakes (and my serious ones), plays cheerleader and wall to bounce ideas off of, who is the go-to person when I don't know something. Best beta ever.

Also, welcome new readers, it's nice to meet you. I'm a bad person because I don't answer all your comments when I get them, but I do eventually and you just have to know I appreciate you guys too. And you people who are coming back for more? You're crazy! I love you guys. Seriously.

So this chapter's nuts. I hope you enjoy more than I enjoyed writing it. XD As you all know, or don't, I barely keep a lid on my shrieks of delight every time I get a comment. To this day my parents still don't know when I flail around the house.

Anyways, no update for a while. I'm going to the mainland - Las Vegas, specifically, for a little over a week.

**8**

Eat your heart, Stark. You have no need of it.

Tony wakes on a choked off gasp, lurching upwards before his eyes have even opened yet. His stomach is rolling, pitching, and he can taste the blood and salt, feel the slimy texture of raw flesh pressed to his lips. He staggers to the bathroom and has enough time to give thanks to the architects for making it so small before he's collapsing to his knees in front of the toilet, retching violently. Nothing of any real consistency comes up, thank god, but he's still left sweaty and shivering, and every breath hurts. Bruce comes in some time later, stopping in the doorway with his hand on the light switch.

"Don't," Tony snaps in a rough whisper. His head is pounding.  
"Tony..." But Bruce's voice is pitched low and he leaves the light off. "I'll be right back."

Tony makes the appropriate affirmative sound and closes his eyes.  
Minutes later, Bruce returns with a can of ginger ale. He helps Tony up from his slump on the floor, cheek sticking to the chilly tiles, and opens the can for him as he leans against the wall.

"Ugh," Tony croaks, taking a sip. The taste mixes with the bile in his mouth and he lurches forward to cough the mouthful into the toilet before settling back again and taking a more confident swallow. Bruce sighs.

"Budge over," he commands, and Tony scoots a few inches at a time until his right side is pressed against the shower wall. Bruce drops next to him, bringing his knees to his chest. He cleans his glasses with his shirt while he waits for Tony to finish the drink.

Eventually the dizziness subsides and Tony feels significantly less nauseous, at which point Bruce uses his mysterious sixth sense to figure this out without Tony saying anything and helps him up. The movement brings all his aches to the forefront, but Bruce keeps him standing when he stumbles.

"I'll finish cleaning up," he says, making sure Tony is steady before letting go. "You can either go back to bed or drink your chlorophyll."

"Yay," Tony grumbles, "spinach smoothies or stone slabs. I like my options."

Bruce only waves a hand in dismissal before turning to the cupboard under the sink for cleaning supplies. Tony heaves a dramatic sigh that devolves into a short coughing fit, aggravating his already sore throat.

"Tony?" Bruce calls from behind the bathroom door. "You okay?"

"Yep," he gasps, pressing a trembling hand to the fire beneath his reactor, " 'm good."

"Smoothie."

"Sure," he mutters. "Smoothie."

The fridge is only a few shuffling steps away - small miracles - but it seems to take forever. By the time Tony gets there he swears it's been at least twenty minutes, even though the clock insists it's only been three. He opens the fridge and gropes around the back without looking, keeping a semi-suspicious eye on the clock until his hand closes around the cup on the top shelf. Pepper hisses when he pulls out the chair she's tucked under, but doesn't move even when he kicks the fridge door shut behind him.

"Hiss yourself, you little monster," he mumbles, trying to swallow the smoothie without tasting it, the way he did the other day. "My chair. Hey, green bean!" he calls in a louder voice. "The clock is broken."  
Bruce sticks his head out from the bathroom. "No, it's not, Tony. Finish your spinach."

"We need to find a better way to do this," Tony says, gesturing with the cup. "Like, an IV or something. Is there a different kind of plant that doesn't taste so bad?"

"There's grass," Bruce suggests.

"Grass-flavoured jelly beans?" Tony jokes, forcing down another mouthful.

"They stopped making the Bertie Bott's beans a few years ago, actually."

"Damn."

"Quit complaining, Tony," Bruce says sternly. "You only have to drink forty ounces of that a day. Now, I have to finish the bathroom. Your HiClean's almost empty, by the way," he adds, waving the bottle of cleaning solution.

Only forty ounces, he says. "There's a refill... somewhere." Tony waves a hand vaguely in the direction of the kitchen cupboard, making a face at the taste (again).

"Right." Bruce sighs and goes back to cleaning.

At first it was humiliating, but after two and a half weeks of Bruce moving in and asserting himself as The Mother Hen, Tony sucked it up and swallowed his pride. Not that he doesn't complain incessantly, but it's usually at least half-joking and Bruce understands, more or less. Sometimes, not so much, and he gets a glowing green reminder, in the form of a glare, as to why he shouldn't piss off the other man. Which, scary. A little. Anyways, once he figured out how to step aside and let Bruce help, things got a lot easier. Most notably, a lack of the tension that had been present when he'd do something embarrassing like, say, sliding off his stool when he tried to stand after sitting still for too long in the same position (and bring about a few other hurts that have less to do with the fact that he'll be forty-one in a couple months and more to do with a certain issue with palladium) and then 'have the nerve to refuse help.' Tough times.

Nowadays Tony's more comfortable sitting aside and trying to swallow forty ounces of plant juice every day while Bruce goes about doing... Bruce things. Most of these things are a mystery to Tony, like cleaning the mirror above the sink after taking a hot shower, or actual incomprehensible biology work, which he assumes is for Bruce's Big Problem (green rage monster, seriously?). Somehow, Bruce is getting money to help pay for the added costs of a second person living in a half-a-person sized apartment, which Tony is not complaining about, but it sure sucks when he leaves and doesn't come back for a couple hours after Tony gets home (it was during the first time this happened that he realized how much he liked having someone else around, and wasn't that a shocker?).

According to Bruce, the last dregs in the bottom of the cup are the most important. They also taste the worst, but that's typical. He could spend hours glowering at the bitter mouthful, and had gotten himself good and ready for it last time; this time, it isn't Bruce who's cutting his pouting hour short, but rather Sarvankar, or more specifically the look on his face if Tony's late to work again. It's not a pretty face, and has a way of making Tony feel really horrible and berating himself for not being at the shop thirty minutes early, well prepared - even if he does have the late shift this evening. Tossing the smoothie back, he glances at the clock to make sure he won't be late, actually checking the time instead of just watching the minute hand.

Eight thirty-seven, it reads.

"Banner," Tony says, "Brucie, what time was my shift tonight?"

The silence is heavy with guilt.

"Look, Tony," Bruce starts, coming outside the bathroom with his hands in the air, like he's got a gun pointed at his head instead of Tony's accusing glare. "You've been sick. You needed the rest, and I'm sure Sarvankar will understand -"

"Bruuuuuce," and no, that is not a whine, "I said a catnap. As in, twenty minutes, not four and a half hours."

"I'm not going to wake you up from the longest stretch of sleep you've had in the entire three weeks I've been here," Bruce argues. "Catnapping isn't healthy."

"Pepper does it," Tony points out, mainly for argument's sake.

"Pepper," Bruce states, "is a cat. Cats get eighteen hours' worth of catnaps a day. You do not. You get maybe three."

"Sleep is for the weak -"

"Sleep is for the sick," Bruce snaps, stabbing a finger at him, "which you are."

Tony looks down at the cup in his hands, walls coated in the gritty green leftovers of the smoothie. He doesn't want to fight with Bruce about work. It's just, he feels so useless, restless, on his ass all day sipping vegetable soup while the world moves on without him. When he tries to move, he hurts and it only frustrates him more even as he feels his resolve to do anything slipping away. The lethargy is as painful as the poison.

"I can't sleep," he says finally. "You know that."

"You need it," Bruce insists, half-heartedly. He knows the argument is over.

"I know," Tony says, and sets the cup on the edge of the table. "I have to go to work," he continues, gripping the chair with one hand and the table with the other to push himself up. "See you."

"Bye, Tony," Bruce sighs.

**8**

"You're late," Sarvankar observes, beefy arms crossed over his chest. His raised eyebrow speaks of curiosity, however, instead of frustration or disappointment. Seems like Tony's not getting his patented Look today. "I didn't think you'd be coming this evening."

"Blame the roomie," Tony says dismissively. "He seems to think I need as much sleep as my cat to function."

"I wouldn't have minded if you'd stayed home to get that rest," Sarvankar says, "because you look like you need it. Still sick?"

"Not really," he lies, stretching his arms over his head. He very carefully ignores the burn in his muscles. "Nice tan line, by the way," he adds, dropping his arms and shaking them a little. "I keep telling you not to wear your work glasses outside, but why listen to me?"

"Why listen to you," his boss snorts. "You're going to have a permanent squint if you don't get a pair of sunglasses yourself."

"Don't need 'em." Tony wanders over to the wall with the clipboard to take a look. "Anything special today?" he calls over his shoulder.

"Not unless we get a walk-in," Sarvankar answers. "Guy down the street brought over his Toyota, though. It's fucked up pretty good."

"Toyotas are boring," Tony complains, but comes over to look anyways. He looks over the damage with a practiced eye, taking in the crusted mess of fluid and torn up wires. "Wow, what the hell."

"Looks like some kind of animal tried to eat the battery," Sarvankar says. "It doesn't work, either. The battery," he adds. "Acid's all gone."

"And they didn't find a body?" Tony snorts. He picks up a wrench from the shelf and fiddles with the bar. "Idiots. What are we supposed to do for them, replace everything? It's all trashed. Just tell the guy to get a new car, it's cheaper than the cost of trying to fix all this."

"You're the expert," Sarvankar says, shrugging. Tony looks at him.

"Uh," he starts, and frowns. "Your shop, your rules? Why am I the expert?"

"Because I s -"

"Excuse me!" A male voice calls in English from the doorway. Tony startles, dropping the wrench and Sarvankar's head snaps up. "We need help with our car! Anyone there?"

"Coming!" Sarvankar calls, switching to his usual perfect English to answer before dropping back into his native language as he gets to his feet. "Better go see what they need." He nudges Tony with an elbow. "Grab the clipboard for me, will you?"

"Yeah, sure," Tony sighs, rubbing the sore spot where Sarvankar touched. "Be right over."

"What can I do for you?" he hears Sarvankar ask in English as he makes his way back to the office wall. The conversation that ensues is pretty standard, he supposes. They should have more people who work here.

"I agree," Yinsen says, leaning against the wall to his right. Tony jumps about three feet off the ground, his heart lurching unpleasantly at the surprise.

"Fuck," he hisses. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm just saying," Yinsen continues. "Having a secretary, or anyone to manage the office, really, would add a sense of professionalism."

"I didn't ask your opinion," Tony grumps, shaking his head and snatching the clip board off the wall.

"You don't need to," Yinsen says pleasantly. "I'm perfectly willing to give it without your express permission. They'll probably have an Audi," he predicts, rubbing a hand over the salt and pepper stubble on his chin. "Foreigners and all, with your luck."

"That'll be just what I need," Tony growls, pretending to looks over the papers.

"I need to shave," Yinsen notes. "What will you do if it is an Audi?"

"Dunno," Tony says, "cry? And um." He shifts his balance from one foot to the other, suddenly awkward. "You can shave."

"I can?" Yinsen asks curiously. "What makes you say that?"

"I went back," he blurts, then flinches at the sharp look Yinsen gives him. "To the cave. That we were, uh." He clears his throat. "In. Kept in."

"Why?" Yinsen demands, but his voice is flat. "When?"

"I found your razor," Tony continues, a little desperately. "In its cup. It was under the only keyboard left. And the battery," his voice cracks, and he clears his throat again. "I found that too."

"I see," Yinsen says softly, and Tony looks everywhere but at the sad acceptance on his face.

"It's on my desk," Tony admits. "The cup, with your razor. I left the battery.

"You weren't there," he says quietly, "when I went that time. I wondered where you were. Can you even hold stuff? I can feel when you touch me but I don't know if -"

"Let's not," Yinsen interrupts, "talk about this. Take the clipboard to your boss. I'll." He sighs. "I'll be here."

"Yeah," Tony says, in a voice that's almost normal, and hurries over to the front of the shop.

"There you are." Sarvankar smiles and takes the clipboard from him. "Did you get lost?"

"Shut up," he grumbles, pulling a pen from his back pocket and jabbing him in the shoulder with it. Sarvankar snatches it and jots down a few notes.

"This one's for you," he says cheerily. "Enjoy."

"What, why?" Tony asks, confused.

"Here, take this -" The clipboard is handed back to him with the pen. "- and I'll tow the car over. Prep your station, we'll be back in a minute."

"Uh, sure..." He watches as the two men hop into their only tow truck and drive off, supposedly to pick up the messed up car. From the notes, it must be pretty bad. Windshield, driver's side door, three tires, and several parts under the hood are damaged. What did they do?

**8**

"WHAT THE FUCK," Tony says, very loudly. Sarvankar snickers behind him. "No, really, what is this?"

"It's an Audi, Acervi," his boss replies. "Get to work."

"I hate you all," he groans, but takes a look anyways.

Minutes later he realizes he's ranting his complaints and disbelief out loud, giving voice to his discoveries as he finds everything wrong with their Audi coupe.

"The A5 model is shitty, they should know better anyway," Tony says. Sarvankar is translating for the owners at top speed, playing filter as well for all the extra information he feels doesn't need to be repeated. Such as Tony's last comment, it seems. "How did this even happen?" he starts again, pacing the length of the car and throwing angry glances at the bubbling engine every time he passes.

"We think someone followed us from Amravati," the red-headed woman says in English (and isn't she something to look at, wow, what the hell is she doing with that blond guy in India?), with Sarvankar serving as translator between them. "Someone," here she casts an accusing glare at her travel buddy, who winces, "had to get in a bar fight with the wrong people."

Is there ever a right person to get in a bar fight with? "Looks like they went with the textbook how-to-ruin-a-car plan of action." Tony frowns. "It's all very neat work, actually."

The windshield's been scraped to hell, probably powdered glass did that, the antifreeze has been cleanly replaced with sand, and it's obvious that the oil was changed with water long enough to fuck everything up, even after replacing the oil. Add sugar in the gas tank, which may not do a whole lot but certainly makes a mess, something unidentifiable shoved up the exhaust pipe, and little pieces of the engine and other parts missing entirely, and Tony's honestly surprised the car hasn't completely fallen apart. That's not even counting the cosmetic damage, either.

"I," the guy says angrily, "don't really give a shit how neat it is, that's my fucking car."

"He's not pleased," Sarvankar translates. Tony scoffs.

"Man, I don't even know how much we can do," he admits, rocking back on his heels. "It'll take days, and a lot of cash. I can fix the important stuff now, and you can have your shit car back by eight tomorrow morning, but the body work won't get fixed for... I'd say a week. That's five days to get the parts and two to put it all together."

"The windshield?"

Tony considers this. "If the damage isn't too terrible, I'll be able to fill some of it in, but not all of it. It might be a better idea to just replace it. That's easy, though, there's an Audi place across town. Hey, boss, would you get that for me?"

"Sure," he agrees. "I'll go call them. What model?"

"The A5 coupe, 2011."

The eventual agreement is made: they don't care about body damage, just the actual function of the car. They have a meet up arranged, they explain, with a friend in Dhantoli.

That's back the way they came, which is odd. Tony says nothing about it, though, instead opting to pull up his tools and get to work.

**8**  
A hand on his shoulder wakes him. It's a familiar hand, warm and not attached to a terrorist. In Tony's sleep-clouded mind, this hand can only belong to one person.

He responds by groaning loudly and obnoxiously, rolling over to squish the man's toes. Oddly enough, he seems to fall of a surface a short distance to the ground - no toes to squish. The jolt sends a shooting pain up his spine, though, which reminds him of why he doesn't sleep on the floor anymore. He opens his eyes and glares at the figure above him.  
"If you let me pass out on the floor," he announces, his Spanish only vaguely slurred by sleep, "you deserve every single complaint I will ever offer for the rest of my sorry life, so help me god, Robert Bruce fucking Banner, I will end you -"

There's a sudden movement to his left and oh, wait, he's at the shop. Tony sits up and blinks the last of the blur away. The woman whose car he's supposed to be working on is chatting with her friend, too far away for him to hear but he saw her react. It was just a twitch, a quick glance in his direction but he caught it.

She recognized Bruce's name, he realizes. She knows who he is.

SHIELD, he thinks, eyes lingering on the faintest bulge in the man's jacket. That's a gun. They're after Bruce.

"Acervi," and oh, the hand belongs to Sarvankar, who is shaking his head, "you're at the shop. It's five in the morning." He raises an eyebrow. "You should listen to your roomie more often."

Tony wrinkles his nose. "Why'd you let me sleep? The floor is hard and cold."

"And you were dead to the world," his boss counters, "so it must not have mattered that much."

It matters, all right. It feels like every inch of him hurts, throbbing with every arrythmic beat of his heart. "Help me up," he commands. "My back hurts."

**8**

Even though they're on the other side of the world, Steve feels like he's right there with the two agents as they make their way through Nagpur. It's a little strange, because there's no visual, but if he closes his eyes the sounds tell him about the city and the people. Now, however, the tension is rising and Steve knows something is wrong.

"How many other Bruce Banners do we know?" Hawkeye snaps over the comm system. "This just got way out of control. We need someone over here, now."

"Who's Bruce Banner?" Steve asks Coulson, who looks grim.

"I'll brief you on the plane ride over there," he answers. "Put some clothes in a bag and get your shield, Captain. I'll see you on the flight deck in twenty minutes."

He hasn't felt so out of the loop since he woke up. "Yes, sir."

Coulson smiles. "Phil is fine, Captain."

**8**

Steve stares at the glass screen in his hands. A giant green beast throws cars and wrecks buildings, roars loud enough to hurt his ears even on low volume. Fire and explosions and screaming and gun shots overwhelm him, and he mashes the power button too hard; the video turns off but the screen cracks, little spiderwebs of stress crawling out from his fingertip. He sighs.

"Are you alright, Captain?" Coulson inquires, looking up from his own files.

"Fine, thank you," Steve sighs, flicking up a document about Dr. Banner's research. His stomach drops when he reads "super soldier serum" as the reason for the Hulk incident. It's a sort of horror, an almost guilt, that he's the only one and other people have tried and failed and look what happened to this poor man who had no idea what he was getting into, and now -

"Captain." A hand closes over his wrist and he jerks. "Please let go of the tablet."

His hands obey and the glass slips away, taken by Agent Coulson. He clears his throat.

"I'm sorry," he says, "for breaking it."

"Not a problem," Coulson says, taking a seat to his right. His paperwork, Steve notices, stays in his old seat. "Are you caught up?"

"Yes, sir," he says, then drops his head into his hands. "Not really."

"Tell me," Coulson says, "about the war."

Steve looks up sharply. "What?"

Coulson waves a hand, staring at the opposite wall of the plane. "The war, your neighborhood, your friends..." He looks over and smiles, just a little. "I've just met Captain America, and he's a great guy. Childhood hero, that sort of thing. I'm sure you know, however, that there was a Steve Rogers before that." His smile widens a bit. "And there's a Steve Rogers on a plane to a foreign country in a new world. What's the biggest disappointment with the future?"

"Oh." Steve thinks this over. "No flying cars, I guess. See, right before I enlisted, I went to an expo with a friend, and this guy was trying to make a car fly..."


	15. Chapter 15

_So it's been nearly two months. I cannot even begin to express how sorry I am for making all you perfect people wait so long. In truth, my trip to the mainland was less than two weeks long (I went to LAS VEGAS, guys, oh my god, even though I'm too young to do just about anything with an age limit, and I went to the GRAND CANYON TOO) but when I came back, I just... didn't write. I tried, honest! But really it took weeks for me to get my ass in gear and actually write what I was supposed to (read: I started a vampire!Tony fic instead). Aaanyway, lots of roadblocks and endless bitching (my poor friends, my poor beta, they suffered immensely) later, you now have over 6k. It wasn't supposed to be that long, actually, I was expecting to have to apologize for making you wait for practically nothing but here we are!_

_So, thanks forever to my lovely beta, Kadigan, who cleans up my word vomit so your eyes don't bleed. Also, this bears repeating from a few chapters ago: if you're reading rustfic, I'm expecting that you're reading Kadigan's fic, Revision. It's awesome, okay, I can't find words to express my mass amount of feelings for it, and if you like hurt Tony and actual accuracy with like, everything (because there's very little I hate more than medical bullshit in a fic) go there ok, shut up and go now, rustfic can wait._

_I would also like to add that the Audi that Clint and Natasha wrecked has a name. Let us all welcome Skittles, the A5 coupe, courtesy of kogouma! Unfortunately, if Skittles isn't tough enough to survive the next few chapters, then the poor thing will be eliminated. We're all rooting for you, Skittles (is Skittles male or female?)!_

_COUGH COUGH OKAY, finally I'm getting to the end. So! The response for last chapter was mind-blowing, alright, like I died about a hundred times because reactions KEPT COMING long after I posted and is it selfish of me to ask you guys to make me go all mushy again, minus the two-month wait? Because I swear it won't take anywhere near that long again. Your comments/reviews got me all emotional, I swear to fuck, I kept getting weird looks for the huge grin on my face that lasted hours after every time I got an email notification. So, pretty please, keep spoiling me? /puppy eyes/ Anyways, thank you for continuing to put up with me, thank you so much oh my god, and WELCOME HELLO NEW PEOPLE! I'm really glad you decided to give rustfic a try! Every little response I get, from a favourite/kudos to a two-word review makes me SO HAPPY. I just. Ugh? I love you guys, really I do._

_**8**_

As it turns out, Agent Coulson (Phil) led a remarkably normal life before SHIELD. There's no clear reason as to why he became an agent, either, aside from his experience in the CIA. Or maybe there is, and there's some event that he's not allowed to share. If so, he's very good at pretending as though that's it, that's his life, and making Steve believe it, too. Then again, that perfect bland smile could hide anything.

Steve wonders if he's ever killed a man (probably)

(almost definitely)

(he just doesn't want to imagine the kind agent covered in someone's blood).

It confuses him when SHIELD arranges to land in a public airport, at first, until he realizes that the plane they took off in looks much like all the others, just smaller. Made for forty people, maybe, instead of hundreds. It's pretty neat, actually, because it's made for so many people but really there's only Coulson, three other agents, and himself. Steve got a whole row to himself when Coulson moved across the aisle to stretch out over the seats (which didn't do much in the way of comfort). He spends sixteen and a half hours fidgeting, desperately wishing he could hunker down and sleep anywhere, in any position, like the boys in the -

Well. He's not one of those people. And by the time he feels like he'll be able to rest, the flight attendants come in to ask him to sit upright and fasten his seatbelt, because they'll be taxiing shortly. He obeys, feeling more than a little exasperated. Coulson makes it a touch better by offering a piece of mint gum to "pop his ears", like he did when they first took off. Steve didn't quite understand the agent's explanation of air pressure and the inner ear, but it's supposed to hurt if he doesn't chew something.

The landing is smooth and painless. Steve waits for the agents to gather up their carry-ons before picking his own bag up and following them off the plane.

So. Public airport. Coulson had warned him, but nothing could have prepared him for this. It's the whole of New York, corner to corner, in one room. The mess of color and light and sound has him reeling back a step or two as he fights to get the sudden sensory input under control. People, everywhere, in all sorts of clothes and speaking languages he's never heard wearing colors he's never seen crowd every last inch of what he can see of the building. He can't stop staring, shocked and amazed and more than a little terrified of the chaos.

Coulson lays a hand on his arm. "Captain," he says, studying his face, "are you alright?"

And just like that, he can shut it all down. He clears his throat. "Yes, s-Coulson," he amends hastily. "There's just, a lot going on."

Coulson nods in understanding, his brow still wrinkled in a way that Steve's beginning to label 'concern'. "There certainly is," he agrees. "But there's a trash bin over there where you can throw out your gum."

And... apparently you're not supposed to swallow gum. _Oops_. "I swallowed it," he admits. Coulson nods again.

"It's not a problem to, as long as you don't make a habit of it," the agent explains.

Steve confirms his understanding, and they move on.

Amravati is hot. The wind hits Steve like he stuck his face in front of a heater on full blast. He pauses to remove the jacket he wore on the plane and stuffs it into his backpack, next to his new Captain America uniform. At the sight of the familiar colors he glances over to the agent carrying the bag with his shield inside, just to make sure she still has it. It bothers him that he's not to carry it himself, but as Coulson said: it'd be odd if he were carrying multiple bags while the other agents had only a duffel apiece. He'll get it back when they're on the train.

The train station itself is a little careworn in places, with stained beige walls and a big sign 's no ceiling indoors, either, but rather a network of wires and metal bars that Steve supposes must be involved with the trains somehow. The trains themselves are massive and colorful, with English letters and foreign characters stenciled on their sides. It all seems typical to Steve, up until he discovers that the only obvious staff are security guards. He watches Coulson insert money into a machine built into a wall (an ATM machine?) but instead of coins or a different currency or whatever else he was expecting, five tickets slide out with a receipt. It gives him a deep sense of unease; they don't need people to do anything nowadays, do they? There are machines at grocery stores, ATMs instead of bank tellers, robots in assembly lines, and now instead of a ticket booth there's a ticket machine stuck in the wall. He half expects to see a robot driving the train, and is ridiculously relieved when he spies a human silhouette through the glass instead. At least there's that.

The agent carrying his shield leans over and whispers that some trains are "automatic" now, meaning that instead of being in the driver's seat, there's a control panel at the station.

He might feel a little sick. It's more than a small comfort that people still use paper tickets, and isn't that sad? He's taking comfort from a piece of mushed-up tree. Steve glares at the offending paper, but it doesn't shrivel or burst into flames or grow a conscience, so he counts it as a loss and follows Coulson onto the train.

Which, of course, is still not what he expected. The entire car is seating, rows and rows facing the front with an aisle cutting through the middle. The five of them take up nearly a whole row, with two agents seated on the left side with a woman in a business suit. Steve, Coulson, and the agent with the shield ("Rebecca Bhandu," she says with a smile and a firm handshake) sit on the opposite side of the aisle, the three of them taking up the whole bench.

Steve watches as their car slowly fills with dozens of people of all color and profession. His fingers itch for color pencils and his sketchpad, if only to give the sudden rush of new and interesting an outlet.

Thirty minutes later, the last passenger has boarded and the doors close. A pleasant female voice makes announcements over the intercom system, which Agent Bhandu translates for his and Coulson's sake.

Steve spends the first hour and a half doodling the people around him. He pretends to not notice when Coulson tilts his head to watch when he's halfway done with his silly sketch of agents in swimwear (from his time). Something has to give eventually, though, so he acknowledges the other man's curiosity by attempting to redraw Black Widow. It's at this point that Coulson actually starts to voice his own opinion.

The last two hours on the train are spent trying to decipher Coulson's vague description of what, exactly, this woman looks like. At some point, Agent Bhandu joins in to correct his lines halfway through drawing them, eventually physically snatching the sketchbook out of his hands to erase a whole section and redraw. He watches, bemused and curious, as she and Coulson quietly bicker over how to explain Widow's hair color to him. It seems they've forgotten that the sketch is in pencil, and that he's not even able to draw anymore since they've taken the pad.

He figures it's safe to say that being able to describe someone is not a standard skill for a SHIELD agent.

Bhandu only returns the sketchpad when the train slows to a stop at the final station. He takes it with a smile and puts it away as everyone stands to exit the train.

There's a car waiting for them outside the Nagpur railway station, large enough to fit the five of them but not so large as to stand out. Steve seats himself comfortably between one of the two other agents and Agent Bhandu, secretly glad that her normally alarmingly frizzy hair has been pulled back into a tight SHIELD-regulation bun; while he would never dare to say it aloud, her hair untamed is so large that there would be no room for anyone to sit next to her without a faceful of it.

Coulson reels off the address before turning back to face Steve. "We'll be splitting up in ten minutes," he announces. "There's another car for agents Donovan, Castle, and Bhandu at the north end of the central marketplace. Agent Sanders will join you as the driver of the white Toyota you'll all be taking." He pulls out his tablet and shows them a picture. "Agent Chussi will remain with Captain Rogers and I. Bhandu," he adds, "don't walk away with the Captain's shield."

"I'll try to move past the temptation, sir," she acknowledges, smiling mischievously.

Coulson raises an eyebrow. Steve doesn't know him well enough to see past the professionalism, but he thinks maybe he might be the tiniest bit amused. "See that you do."

But when they get to the dropoff point, Bhandu badgers her way back in by switching places with Chussi, who scowls at her from the outside of the driver's side window.

"Where to, Agent sir?" she chirps, hands on the wheel. Coulson offers the tiniest of sighs before reading the address of the mechanic's shop to her. Steve is quite honestly surprised that Coulson would deal with that sort of insubordination.

"She's the niece of one of my old partners," he explains quietly. "I took her in when he died. Ten years later, she gets herself into SHIELD and I'm her superior." He gestures vaguely."I still can't say no to her. She's good with tension and knows how to work under pressure, else I wouldn't give her any highly important tasks or missions." He shrugs a tiny bit. "I don't tell her that, though I'm not sure she believes I can be truly stern with her."

Steve smiles, warmed by the story, but allows Coulson to end their discussion of the subject with the clearing of his throat.

"We're past due to check in with agents Barton and Romanov," he observes, glancing at his watch. "The train ran late."

"They're probably wondering where we are," Coulson says with a sigh. He pulls out their earpieces and hands one to Steve. "They haven't had anything to do for... nineteen hours now. I expect Barton is driving Romanov up the walls at this point."

Steve... is not surprised at all by that idea. Instead of responding, he opts to fiddle with the earpiece in an attempt to figure out how to turn it on even as Coulson slips his over his own ear with no trouble.

"I want them to find out more about this acquaintance of Doctor Banner's before we get there."

"The mechanic?" Steve questions. "They thought he might be related to Iron Man, right?"

"A little short for the job, but yes," Coulson agrees. Steve looks up from the communicator, surprised.

"You think Acervi's the guy actually in the suit?"

"I do," Coulson says. "He's friends with the Hulk, Captain. He must have some sort of defense against the doctor should he get a little too angry."

Steve tries to hide the wince, really he does, and to his relief their earpieces come to life before the agent can say anything about it. Not that he thinks Coulson would. Probably he already understands, after watching Steve read about Doctor Banner on the plane.

_"Coulson!_" That's Hawkeye, audibly relieved through the faint static. _"Where were you?"_

_"He was worried,_" Black Widow states, the smirk clear in her voice. He has yet to correctly visualize her, and at this point is looking forward to seeing her in person.

"The train ride over was an extra forty minutes longer than it should have been," Coulson explains. "We had no secure way to contact you."

_"But you're on your way now?"_

"No more than twenty minutes out," Coulson promises. "What's it look like over there?"

_"Well, Acervi's actually a really good mechanic,"_ Barton says, sounding amused. _"He bailed right after he finished up, ranting to himself about how his room mate's a mother hen._" He pauses._ "Guy looked tired."_

"His room mate, the Hulk?" Steve asks, skeptical despite himself.

_"Apparently."_

"Do you have any pictures of him?" Coulson asks, frowning hard at his tablet screen.

_"We didn't have the opportunity to get a good shot without looking suspicious,_" Widow says, sounding faintly apologetic.

_"That's alright,"_ Hawkeye says, and Coulson closes his mouth. _"Cap can draw him."_

Steve considers this. With a detailed enough description, maybe he could try... but then he remembers Agents Coulson and Bhandu on the train, and thinks better of his decision. "I'm not that skilled of an artist," he says instead.

_"Captain,"_ Widow says, _"you drew Hawkeye accurately based on the sound of his voice."_

Steve isn't sure why he's feeling so flustered. "Well, yes, I think, but -"

"_Okay,_" Hawkeye chirps, seriously chirps, _"ready? So let's see, I'd say he's about five eight, five n -"_

"Hang on," Steve says quickly, desperately trying to catch up with what's going on, "let me get my sketchpad out."

Coulson watches him flail around for a pencil with a tiny smile Steve doesn't notice.

"Okay," he says finally, settling down with his sketchpad open and pencil in hand. "Can we start with his face? If I get that right we can do the rest."

_"Sure,"_ Barton says amiably. _"Ready now?"_

"Sure."

_"I see everything,"_ he warns, _"so be prepared for a lot of detail."_

He wasn't kidding. Barton covers every inch of Acervi's face, every line and wrinkle. He somehow manages to put the curl of his hair into simple descriptive words, explains the shape of his face with a sentence, illustrates the exact shade of the mechanic's eyes with a phrase. Steve, increasingly troubled with each pencil stroke, can't shake the sense of familiarity. It only worsens when he realizes that even as Barton is talking, his lines are a half step ahead.

_He's drawn this face before._

At this thought he freezes, staring hard at the shape of the face and eyes while Barton continues. He mentally runs through every sketch he's done of a person in this time; did he see the man in the airport? On the train? Down the street? He narrows his eyes, tuning out the conversation around him while he thinks.

_"Clint tracked him past the Starbucks he frequents to the street he lives on before turning back. He said it's a fairly straightforward path, no trouble finishing the route."_

_"It may be necessary to surround the apartment before confronting them. Even if it won't do anything to the Hulk, Doctor Banner must have enough of a conscience to not want his room mate to get hurt."_

_"Do you think Acervi even knows the guy he's living with is a monster?_"

He can rule out the more recent faces. This is a person he's sketched more than once...

_"Definitely. He referenced the color green in passing to the man who runs the place. Seems to be some sort of inside joke."_

_"The boss man knows about him, too?"_

… which means he can't be from any of Steve's midnight drawings. Who has he done more than once?

"_He knows something, anyways. Maybe not the full story, but probably more than we know."_

_"He knows about that secret room in the back of the shop."_

_"Room?"_

It's something about the eyes.

_"Yeah, the other workers call it Acervi's 'corner'. They're not allowed to go in, and when we poked around the guy himself came over to ask us to move. Said he's got a forge running in the back. I don't think he realized we knew what he was saying."_

_"Seriously. That was some creative usage of the word 'fuck' when he was working on the car. He really hates Audis, it was hilarious."_

_"Have you found anything Iron Man related?"_

_Iron Man. Technology_. Howard would've loved -

_Howard_. But not. So then - but that can't -

_"If there is anything, it's in that back room."_

_"We're passing New Singapore, gonna be at the shop soon. Are you out front?"_

_"At the Starbucks, down the street. We'll meet you there."_

"Tony Stark," Steve mutters. The conversation between the three (four) agents grinds to a halt.

_"Say what, Cap?"_

"This guy, Acervi," Steve says, a little louder, a little more confident. "He's Tony Stark."

_"Captain,"_ Widow says, _"Stark died three years ago."_

"No, well yes, he did, but he didn't," he insists, digging around for his midnight sketchbook. He flips distractedly until he finds one of the, at this point, four sketches he's done of the man. "Here." He offers them both to Coulson. "They're the same person. Stark isn't really dead. He moved to India."

There's a long moment of tense silence and stillness while the sketches are examined.

Finally, Coulson closes both sketchpads and hands them back to Steve, rubbing a hand over his face. "Oh, hell," he sighs. "He's right."

**8**

_Seventeen hours ago_

Tony is hyper-aware of their presence as the 'customers' wander around the shop. More than once he pauses to glance up when he loses sight of one or both, only for them to reappear somewhere entirely different from where he thought they were.

_Fucking ninjas_. They're trouble.

He reflects on what Bruce has told him about SHIELD and their agents. They're supposed to be sneaky, clever, excellent actors, not too memorable (but that's a lie; the redhead is an absolute hottie and nobody could convince him to forget that figure) and skilled in everything they attempt. He's gotta say, now that he's paying his closest attention, he can see their unnatural grace, their careful disinterest as they scope out every inch of his shop.

They're both loaded with all sorts of crazy weaponry, too. Weaponry they wouldn't hesitate to use against Bruce if they feel the need. And, judging by how the guy's hand occasionally twitches toward his pocket (likely subconscious), he's guessing they're a little on the trigger-happy side. If they find Bruce they're gonna try to take him. They can't do that.

He has to leave. He has to get Bruce out of here.

The very thought of his slip up makes him almost sick with guilt. He can hardly believe he wasn't paying enough attention. It's not as if Bruce has ever made him sleep on the floor, anyways, much less wanted him to, and - he sighs. He's getting distracted again.

Tony's been working on the SHIELD car for... the better part of seven hours, now. Others have dropped in, workers to say hello and help out or familiar faces from the coffee shop to give him a frappuccino and giggle at his frustration over the Audi. His neighbor drops by, once, curious about his all-nighter and gifting him with a couple donuts. It's a great community, close-knit, where everyone has at least heard of everyone else in their little run down area of the city. He likes to think he's a part of it, that he's one of them, even if he's really not. He pretends, though. He tries.

Well, he won't have to any longer. Thanks to his own fuck up he'll have to leave, to make sure Bruce isn't attacked because of his lapse in judgement. The idea of leaving Nagpur is terrible, almost horrifying. He already feels a little lost. Where is he supposed to go now?

_Maybe I can country-hop with Green Bean_, he thinks, fighting to stay positive. He won't last long in constant motion, but he imagines it's fun to sneak through borders and see new places with company. Much easier than his own travels had been.

But then, with all this, he's assuming that Bruce won't hate him for what he started. After all, he's been running from the US government and SHIELD for, what, five years?

Tony's the one who messed that up for him.

_Okay_, he thinks, glowering down at the wrench in his hand, l_ess self-flagellation, no matter how badly you fucked this up, and more planning on the 'what now'._

_God, those SHIELD fuckers must've done the Audi thing on purpose, just to piss me off._

_Fuck, but these cars are stupid._

With a sigh, he uncaps some tubing and continues to patch and clean. It's fairly easy to drop into the near-mindless motions of engine repair, a muscle memory created from constant work in the shop. More than once he catches his own gaze wandering, not even needing to look at certain points. It's all pretty standard: the rest of the shop moves around him, Sarvankar popping up to force a cup of much-needed water, the SHIELD people nosing around his corner -

Uh-uh. _No_.

Before he even really thinks about his actions, before he can properly panic, Tony is up and over there, standing between the SHIELD people and the curtains leading to his workshop with only a tiny flathead for protection. He brandishes it anyway, gesturing behind him and at the rest of the shop as he speaks.

"I'm sorry," he says, "but area is off-limits to non-employees. There's a running forge," a small bit of truth, "so it's a dangerous room for those who don't work here." And you don't understand a word I'm saying, he silently adds at the guy's blank stare. "Hey boss," he says louder, catching Sarvankar's attention, "how do I tell them 'do not enter'?"

Sarvankar rolls his eyes but voices his request in English. The customers' expressions clear and they back away, turning to investigate something else. Tony has the sneaking suspicion that they'll be back. Considering the Iron Man armor is hidden back there, he better figure out a way to clear out soon.

**8**

"All done?" Sarvankar asks, grinning. Tony signs _दांते आचेर्वि_ with a flourish and shoves the clip board back at the man, the pen rolling off and hitting the ground.

"Yep," he says distractedly, tugging his long sleeves over his wrists before dumping all the tools that somehow ended up in his pocket onto a nearby cart. "The roomie's probably furious at me for not coming home to rest. Such a mother hen, seriously."

"You can tell him you got an hour in here," Sarvankar chuckles, stooping down to pick up the pen before hanging the clip board up on its hook. Tony's back twinges in acknowledgement as he takes the pen and ducks into the office to drop it into a cup.

"Har har," he grumbles. "That extra hour not working on the car is time I could have used sleeping in my own home. Keys are on the bench by the driver's side door," he adds, guessing at his boss's thoughts (correctly).

Sarvankar laughs again. "Go home before you psyche yourself out of facing him. Take the day off," he says as an afterthought. "You can have the next night shift. Get some rest. Or get your hair cut." Here he gives him a significant look. "I've given up on your stupid habit of multiple longsleeved shirts, but having hair down past your ears is ridiculous in this heat."

Tony, in an act of maturity properly demonstrating the difference between age and personality, sticks his tongue out at the man. He makes a show of walking backwards out the door, too, for good measure.

As his feet take him to Starbucks, though, he quietly and internally panics over what's to come.

The ladies greet him as usual, he orders his two drinks as usual, they wave as he leaves as usual. To everyone else, it's just a regular day like any other.

He's struck, suddenly, by the realization that he's just one person, one life in the whole world of lives. What's his disappearance going to do, here? How will he affect the people around him? _Will_ he affect the people around him? He's got the feeling that the Starbucks ladies might miss him, and Sarvankar might be upset... But really, that's it.

How lonely.

By the time Tony climbs the final stair to his apartment, he's breathing heavily and has chugged both his drinks, abandoning them somewhere in a large trash pile on the way up because there are hardly any public trash bins. He's tired, wearing three shirts to hide the glow of the reactor, and it's over ninety degrees Fahrenheit and climbing. He hopes Bruce is home.

Surprise! He isn't. Pepper raises her head and blinks at Tony from her spot on the couch. Tony mumbles a greeting and gives her a two-second scratch behind the ears before yanking the blanket out from underneath her. Pepper shrieks in surprise and flails, attempting to dig her claws into something but only succeeding in bowling over onto the next cushion. After sitting up and resettling herself, she shoots him a glare and gives a deep growl.

"Hiss yourself, you brat," Tony says dismissively, folding the blanket carefully. "I need this."

Tony never had a pet before, much less a cat. It's odd how quickly she clawed her way into his life, but he never minded. Now, he wonders how he's going to live without waking to a ten-pound lump of fur on his stomach, or fighting her for the last piece of fish. He can't possibly take her with him, after all. He'll be losing Pepper _for the third time_, he thinks.

It's his own fault for getting attached.

He takes his time packing. It's only ten in the morning, and if he's going to bring the suit (the armor, oh god the armor, what's he going to do about that, it's not like he can just _carry_ it) he'll have to get it at night, when no one's around. He's also waiting, hoping Bruce will come home before night falls because he will, he won't be attacked before he makes it because he can't be, oh shit what if SHIELD already has him? The worry is a tight knot behind the reactor, weighing him down.

_They won't, they don't, Bruce can handle himself. He did just fine avoiding them before he met me, he'll be fine now._

All the same, Tony stares around his tiny apartment with a new sense of hopelessness. He can't do this alone, not anymore. At some point in the last year he's become reliant on other people to get on, and isn't that inconvenient?

But Bruce doesn't come after twelve hours, and Tony's late for his shift again (not that he'll ever have a shift to be on time for again) because he's been pacing anxiously, feeling nervous and sick and paranoid. He even drank the two smoothies in the fridge, for lack of anything else to do after fitting everything he could reasonably take, both his and Bruce's possessions, into two backpacks and a briefcase. He gave all his scrap metal and tools to the delighted neighbor, the worker at the New Singapore factory who's been eyeballing his tool table for three years. It pains him more than he'd ever admit to part with it all.

At ten-fifteen, he acknowledges that he has to go. Scribbling a quick note in English (_Hey Brucie, I'm heading to the shop and holding your favourite loafers hostage. Meet me there when you can. Sorry - T_) that he folds up and ties to a disgruntled Pepper's foreleg, he gives the apartment and the bags a quick once-over (special things like Yinsen's razor and Bruce's photo of that Betty girl carefully packed, important things like the palladium chips within easy reach) before taking a deep breath and locking the door behind him (for the last time).

It's more of an effort to carry the three bags than he expected, and he's winded by the time he gets to back door of the shop. It opens quietly into his workshop; only he and Sarvankar should be in the building, but better safe than sorry. He drops the bags by his desk and begins collecting the various pieces of the armor into a pile. It takes a solid fifteen minutes, but when he's done he stares at it, at a loss. What do I do with it?

Tony thinks back to his neighbor's excited face when presented with the tools and metal, considering. The man works at the metalworking factory a block or so away. Half the building is a steel mill, full of giant vats of molten iron and steel... The idea doesn't sit well with him, and the whole vat will be ruined with the impurities in the suit, but does he have a choice?

_Don't you use that suit again, Tony, you'll only kill yourself faster._ Bruce, blunt as ever, has had to remind him constantly, stopping him every time he felt the need to use the suit. No matter what he wants, it's not like he can be Iron Man again anyways.

He hears his boss grunt and drop something that hits the ground with a ringing sound. There's no music playing this late at night, and the silence is near painful. The armor gleams silver in the fluorescent lighting. For once, his forge is dark and cold. It's all very final, and sad. Bruce hasn't shown up yet, either. He already feels alone.

Maybe... he should say goodbye.

Tony moves before he can convince himself not to, getting to his feet and pushing his way through the chains and sheets that serve as the wall separating his workshop from the rest of the building. The chains clink and rattle and he freezes, wishing for a split second that he'd never moved and that he could go back inside to angst in peace but nope, Sarvankar looks up at the sound.

"Acervi!" he says jovially, standing up and brushing metal shavings off his lap. "I thought you'd never get here, you're two hours late!"

"Yeah," is what comes out of Tony's mouth, "sorry."

Sarvankar's smile fades as he takes in Tony's general posture, clearly reminiscent of the phrase deer in the headlights. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing. Look." Tony sighs heavily, running his hands through his too-long hair as the full gravity of the situation hits him yet again. "I just came over to say goodbye."

"Goodbye?" Sarvankar echoes, visibly alarmed. "Why?"

"It's," Tony tries, gesturing vaguely behind him, unsure of how to continue. This was a mistake, this was such a mistake, what had he been thinking? "It's my fault. Uh, Greenie and I need to get moving, and soon -" His heart lurches painfully against the reactor when something clangs loudly against metal, but it's just Sarvankar dropping the tools in his hands.

"But why?" the man asks. "You've been here for three years, Dante," and the use of his first name really _hits hard_, "you're my best friend." He crosses the room in four long strides and grips Tony's shoulders firmly. "Is it really that important?"

"I'm sorry," Tony mutters, then, louder, "look, this was a mistake, I should've just left -"

"What," Sarvankar says in a strained voice, and Tony refuses to look him in the eye, "you'd disappear, and leave me to think you'd been killed in a back alley in Dhantoli?" His fingers dig into poisoned veins but Tony says nothing about it.

"That would be better than this," he argues, "because at least then you wouldn't know anything."

There's a short silence, during which Tony associates the burning in his chest to the rising shitstorm of emotion. He's fucking this all up, and there's no going back on what he just said, god, can he be any more stupid?

"This is about those Americans," Sarvankar says suddenly, "from this morning."

Tony swallows, the taste of palladium bitter on his tongue.

"They're after your friend," Sarvankar continues, rapidly connecting the dots. His brow furrows. "What are they, some sort of government agency? And they want to take your friend in?" He takes Tony's silence for the answer it is. "Okay," he declares, stepping back and releasing Tony's shoulders. "How can I help?"

"You can't," Tony says shortly. "You can forget that I ever came here tonight, that you've heard from me any time after I went home from work this morning. For all you know, my roomie and I just disappeared - or I was killed in a back alley in Dhantoli. No, don't argue," he adds at Sarvankar's protest, "this is for the best. Seriously. You're safe if you don't know anything."

"That bad, huh?" his boss asks quietly, but he doesn't need an answer. "You can trust me," he promises.

"I appreciate that," is all Tony can think to say, and he does.

"But who's going to fix all the Audis we get?" Sarvankar jokes weakly. Tony snorts.

"Dahnke can do it," he says dismissively. "The only reason I've ever done them all is because he's a lazy shit."

"You gonna come back to make sure he's doing a good job?"

"Yeah," Tony says. They both know it's a lie.

"Have you got time before you leave?" Sarvankar ventures. "We never finished up that guy's Toyota."

"I - yeah." He'll wait for Bruce until midnight. If they don't meet up by then, he'll drop a note under the screwdriver with the red handle and put it with the boss's tools.

He has time, until he doesn't.

It starts out small, the same little twinges and shocks of pain he's been feeling for the last few hours. At first he brushes it off, associating it to the poisoning and reassuring Sarvankar that he's alright every time he pauses to let it wash away. Bruce's disappearance is much more important, and the worry is a leaden ball in his chest. The reactor has never felt so heavy.

Together they pick over every inch of the car before them, eventually making the same decision Tony had initially: it's better to just get a new car rather than attempt to repair all the damage. They're chatting about different options for the owner of the Toyota when it happens: he's talking one second and on his knees the next, doubled over and gasping. It _hurts_, in a way he's never felt, or maybe just hasn't felt in a very, very long time, in a way he has never been able to describe and never wants to try. The arc reactor feels like it's about to fall out, like there's just a hole there except there isn't, because he can feel every inch of the parts that aren't there anymore, and what is there instead isn't enough.

It hits him, what's going on, and he struggles to get his shirts off, pulling and struggling and suffocating in them and not panicking, but really he is. There are other hands, hindering and then helping, and he fights with himself on who it could be before deciding (_Yinsen_) that if they're not harming then they must not be trying to kill him, which is good. Together, he and the cool pair of hands work off the first shirt, then the second, and the third, finally tossing his tanktop (Tony's final line of defense) to reveal the pits and scars and the glowing white reactor in his chest -

except it's not glowing. It's just black, empty darkness behind the glass casing.


End file.
